


The Idle Job

by kelleigh (girlfromcarolina)



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, M/M, spn_j2_bigbang_2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:14:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlfromcarolina/pseuds/kelleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Texas Ranger Jensen Ackles always walks into a new town the same way – with two eyes open and one hand on his gun.  He’s worked dozens of these jobs across the Union of Seceded States, in small towns and big cities, scrubbing the streets clean of the bad elements before moving on to the next job with his ornery pup, Mo, riding shotgun.  Jensen’s personally assigned to Idle, Colorado by the Captain of the Ranger’s Office of Special Projects to protect the interests of a rising political star, and he quickly finds that Idle’s not as quaint as it seems on paper.  Idle is rotting from the inside-out and Jensen’s got to make sense of the situation before the bodies start turning up.  Throw in a missing Sheriff, two deputies Jensen isn’t sure he can trust, and Jared, the local doctor who keeps getting involved in Jensen’s business, and this job’s bound to be a wild ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Idle Job

**Author's Note:**

> The funny thing is I hadn’t watched a single episode of Justified when I started writing this. I saw the ads and the promotional pictures, and I heard reviews from a lot of my friends, and all of that helped me develop the idea for this story. The massively AU setting came out of nowhere and I questioned using it several times. But I was attached to the idea of changing something as unrelated to the characters themselves as the history of the United States, and the way something like that would changes the lives of ordinary people.
> 
> So while I can say that this was _inspired_ by Justified, it’s far from being based on the show. There are pieces, a nod here and there (as well as nods to a few other shows), but not a whole lot more than that. If you’re reading this expecting a retelling of the show, sorry to disappoint! Raylan Givens will not be making a surprise appearance in Idle. :)
> 
> Ideas and themes were drawn from other sources including the television series, The Magnificent Seven, the movies Carriers and Walk Tall, and the non-fiction book, The Dark Side of Camelot.

**Title.** The Idle Job  
 **Author.** Kelleigh  
 **Artist.** Amindaya  
 **Rating.** NC17  
 **Pairing.** Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki  
 **Genre.** RPS AU.  
 **Warnings.** Bad guys. Big guns. Explicit sex. Minor character death. Alternate U.S. History.  
 **Words.** 50,300  
Written for the 2011 spn_j2_bigbang challenge!

 

THE IDLE JOB

The railroad tracks come to a stop a hundred miles outside of the city. It’s hard to say who’d ripped up the pressure-treated beams, but a whole pile is sitting ten yards away in a motley heap of dirt and wood, with weeds and crabgrass growing up through the debris.

Someone must’ve needed a blowtorch to burn through the metal – whoever it was probably hauled the lot off to a scrap dealer and earned themselves a full fist of cash. Must not have happened long after the Division since the earth has bounced back and overtaken the hammered ground where the tracks once laid, leaving nothing more than parallel indents in the soil leading off to the west. Nature wasted no time reclaiming what was hers.

At least the highway runnin’ alongside the old tracks is in decent shape, a two-lane strip of black top with a crumbling shoulder on either side. The paint job’s faded but it’s far from the worst Jensen’s ever seen. All he needs is a radio and a smooth ride, and if he can’t have both, he’s happy to have a good road – he can’t afford to bust a tire before his next post. Ranger work pays, but it’d been a slow winter and Jensen’s captain can’t pull jobs outta thin air.

Mo’s flopped on the passenger side of the bench seat, big paws hanging down into the foot well. The mutt snores louder than any man Jensen’s had the displeasure of waking up next to, puppy jowls flapping. Jensen had picked Mo up two postings ago before some greasy bottom-feeder could turn the runt into ground meat. Fuckin’ sicko. Jensen had left the guy with only a broken jaw when he easily could have shot the bastard’s nuts off.

Just ‘cause the Secessionland is a good bit poorer than the United States or California, it doesn’t mean they have to be uncivilized.

Mo whines in his sleep and his silky soft ears twitch. Jensen keeps the Sabre going steady, pushing seventy, cutting through the territory like a hot knife through butter. He ought to make Braywater by dinner and he’ll find himself a room and a connection for the night. He’s itching for a new job to fall into but they’re coming fewer and farther in between.

It ain’t that Jensen’s worried – he’s the best at the job. He’s the solution when all you’ve got are problems. Just don’t forget to pay him or you’ll have a whole new kind of problem.

Might take a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but Morgan’ll get him another job, and Jensen will walk tall into that one the same way he always does: two eyes open and one hand on his gun.

The Sabre rumbles over a patch of rough pavement, heaves left over from a cold winter and neglected upkeep, and Mo woofs with his eyes closed.

“Learn to drive if you’re gonna complain,” Jensen says, steering the car around a pothole. “Otherwise, leave me in peace.”

He cranks up the radio and lets the highway take him toward the foothills.

  


Braywater is twice the size of Jensen’s last post, which ain’t saying a hell of a lot. Means there’s more than one highway motel for him to choose from, but he’s guessing none of them are keen on takin’ dogs.

It’s a damn good thing Mo’s learned to be quiet when it counts.

The room he ends up with has a view of the parking lot. Beyond that, just a forest of old billboard stumps and crumbled foundations. It could have been a strip mall a decade ago before most small town businesses collapsed under the weight of shrinking populations.

The sky’s been the same shade of gray all day, hard to tell what time it is. The bedside clock flashes 12:00 in digital red numbers and Jensen wonders if the power in Braywater cuts out every night. Rationing’s not unheard of in these parts; sometimes a town’s just too far from the power hubs and can’t pay to maintain power around the clock.

Mo circles between the bed and the wall while Jensen grabs necessities out of his overnight bag. He leaves the rest in the car; unlike a motel room, the Sabre can’t be broken into.

Turning around when he hears Mo’s tail thumping against the knobby carpet, Jensen shakes his head.

“I don’t wanna know what scent you’ve caught there, buddy.”

All kinds of unappealing things come to mind. Jensen never looks too closely at the dark spots on motel rugs. Mo huffs and sticks his mottled snout against the baseboard.

“And I’m going out to eat by myself tonight, ‘cause I’m getting way too used to talkin’ to you.”

The mutt’s unfazed by Jensen’s dilemma.

Jensen leaves Mo snuffling around in the room, confident that his pup will keep quiet. He walks across the gravel lot, boots crunching the rocks, and ends up at a roadhouse two blocks up the road towards town. He checks the cars in the lot first: makes, models, license plates. More than half have handwritten tags taped inside their rear windows – the local government has more important things to worry about than car registrations.

Inside, no one greets Jensen but he feels eyes on his back, checking his stride. Years have taught Jensen how to mask his gun swagger, his piece concealed so that it’s not obvious. Jensen’s not working this town; no need for anyone to know he’s carrying.

The thick-neck tendin’ bar doesn’t say hello, just points Jensen to an empty table under the front window. The chair wobbles but the menu’s got a lot to offer, more options than Jensen’s used to seeing. In his head, he promises Mo a burger, no onions. The mutt’s breath is like a landfill already.

There’s an indistinguishable twang to the house music. It’s not the classic rock Jensen prefers but it ain’t gonna make his ears go numb. His waitress, a bony thing with shorn black hair, shrugs off small talk – Jensen’ll try to leave her a tip in appreciation – and walks away with his simple order. Chicken roasted on the bone and whatever vegetables the kitchen is cookin’ up and callin’ a side dish tonight. He’ll order Mo’s burger later.

Jensen’s sat in dozens of roadhouses like this one. There are always patrons claiming to be _just passin’ through_ who wind up coming back night after night, nowhere better to move along to. A few locals, too, men and women who’ve always called Braywater home, for better or for worse. As far as Jensen’s seen, Braywater is getting by. The variety on the menu tells him crops and livestock around here have been good for a few years – they probably export quite a bit to turn a profit. It could bode well for Jensen.

He flags down his waitress after she drops off a steaming plate that ain’t his.

“Excuse me. Do y’all have a hard line connection in town?”

“Hard wired and satellite.”

“Satellite, really?” Jensen asks but the girl’s out of range, heading back around to the kitchen. He wasn’t expecting to find a more sophisticated connection ‘til he made it through to Texas. Dishes require a lot of money or a back-door government deal, bureaucrats with special interests or greedy pockets. Though, every now and then, Jensen runs across a few resourceful citizens manufacturing their own sat dishes – former engineers or tech specialists. All the same, it’s welcome news.

His dinner arrives on the waitress’s next pass. Chicken’s a tad on the scrawny side but the vegetables are steamed crisp, not soggy. Mo’s treat, tin-foiled and sitting in a brown paper bag, arrives as Jensen’s pickin’ the neck bone clean of dark meat, fingers slick and greasy but his stomach’s singing a happy tune for the night.

Jensen tosses a couple of folded bills on the check when his waitress sets it down. “Where can I pick up the sat connection?” The satellite must not be a secret if she’s throwing details out to strangers. That or she doesn’t know any better.

The girl is bold, counting Jensen’s cash and pocketing it without asking if he needs change. Jensen writes it off as the cost of information.

She asks, “You have your own equipment?”

“Yup.”

“Try the library,” she tells him, hand folded over the cash in her apron. “It’s a wing off town hall, ‘bout three blocks up. They don’t advertise it, but you can hook up to the sat there.”

“Appreciate it,” he drawls.

She’s gone after that without acknowledging his thanks. Hardly a big deal. Jensen grabs his mutt’s burger and leaves, roadhouse door slamming behind him. The streetlight above him hisses, power lines frowning where they’re strung from post to post down Main Street. There’s no daylight left to give, Jensen walks back to the motel in semi-darkness, stepping around the halos cast on the road by flickering lamp posts. Mo’s gotta be starving and all the equipment Jensen needs is in the Sabre’s trunk.

A satellite connection – lucky find. Jensen’ll be able to file his last report and, if he’s lucky, get a line on some work sooner rather than later. It won’t do the Rangers any good to let him sit idle.

Mo slobbers all over his burger, swallowing faster than his puppy teeth can chew.

“Slow down, mutt, before you choke,” Jensen grumbles, setting a bottle of Texas Red Eye on the nightstand for when he gets back. The dog’s not listening, stopping only when he gets the paper bag between his teeth and growls like there oughta be more. “Bet that bag’s tasty, Mo.”

Jensen sighs, worn down from a long day’s drive. Even Mo settles when he’s done eating, sprawled on the end of the bed, his shiny brown eyes asking Jensen to stick around.

“I’ve gotta go,” he explains as his pup whines. “We need a job, buddy.” Lord help him if Morgan ever heard Jensen commiserating with his dog. He’d be laughed right outta the ranks.

Mo’s silent begging doesn’t last; the pup’s snoring again. If the motel manager ever stops to have a listen, the nosy little man will think Jensen’s sawin’ timber. Let him.

The Sabre purrs steadily when Jensen starts her up. He doesn’t waste time staring longingly at the motel room’s door, aching to relax in a bed that’s actually his, but he thinks about it as he’s pulling out onto the main road and hoping the library keeps late hours.

Someday there won’t be any more postings. Someday time will be his again and he can go lookin’ for a life away from the job, if he’s not in a pine box six feet under already.

It’ll happen someday, but not today.

So, Jensen drives.

  


“Idle, Colorado? Never heard of it.”

Jensen’s fingers travel across the map, crossing the Oklahoma panhandle into the southeastern corner of Colorado.

He’s back in the warm heart of Texas, three days out from wrapping up a small support job with a couple ‘a other Rangers. Jensen put Braywater in his rearview mirror almost two weeks ago.

It feels easier laying his head down at night in the Lonestar state again, like the air’s made of different stuff down here. This motel certainly ain’t his home, but Jensen’s not even sure he has one. Home’s not the right word to describe the lonely Dallas apartment the Rangers keep on their books for him anyway.

Jensen crooks his shoulder, repositioning the phone against his chin.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a hell of a lot there, Morgan.”

His captain’s resonant laugh lacks dimension over the motel’s landline.

“You lookin’ for a spot to vacation?” Morgan asks. “I never pegged you as the picky kind.”

“Is it a job or not?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Morgan grumbles. “Let me grab the specs McKellip sent me. Just a sec, Jensen.”

JD Morgan’s been Jensen’s captain for five years and a pain in his ass for more than a decade, ever since he rode Jensen’s ass hard at the Academy. Morgan’s the reason he stuck it out back then, through every training camp and division shuffle. Jensen had started in the Highway Patrol, but Morgan hadn’t left him in peace, yanking him out when he made captain of Special Projects. And back then, after everything that’d happened, Jensen was all too eager to make the switch.

“Wait,” Jensen says, cutting into the sound of papers shuffling across JD’s desk. “Did you say McKellip? What’s he got to do with this?”

“The posting came down to me from his office. He’s – ah! Got it.”

“Since when do the Rangers bend over for government hacks?” Jensen hisses, eyes cutting across the motel room to Mo; the pup’s gnawing happily on one of Jensen’s shoes. Jensen chucks its mate across the room to shoe the mutt off. Mo backs away, one fuzzy ear flopping forward.

“Don’t even start, Jensen. You know how this works. I guess McKellip’s got an interest in Idle.”

“What kind of interest?”

“You think I get paid enough to know those kinds of details?” Morgan’s question comes hard across the line. “I just know he wants someone in there ASAP, someone with a badge who’s good at taking out the trash. Now, are you done waxin’ all bitter about politics so I can tell you about this job?”

“Fine,” Jensen mutters, feeling like JD’s done tossed a shoe at him. He pulls a soft face at Mo in sympathy. “Hit me.”

“Small town in Colorado,” Morgan begins, with the crinkle of a case folder as a backdrop for his voice. “Guess it used to be a farming outpost until about twenty years back when the state government laid down blacktop for Highway 81 just to the south of it. It grew from nothin’ to a decent-sized place over the next couple of years, but that dropped off maybe ten years ago.”

“Any clue on why?”

Mo’s come over to tuck himself at Jensen’s feet, tongue lolling out one side of his mouth. Jensen scratches roughly behind the mutt’s ears as he listens; every detail JD gives him is mentally cataloged for later.

“I think there was some rough action in that area a decade or so ago. Not in Idle as far as I can remember, but it might have scared people off from really settling there. I remember once 81 had been built, there were a lot of gun busts along the highway. Guess the runners favored it because it was out of the way.”

“Good way to move contraband in from California,” Jensen says, tracing the hairline curves of Highway 81 on his map. “Is gun running still a problem in the area?”

Morgan hums. “Trade’s been dead in Colorado for a while. The last major bust must’ve been over five years back, the Sheppard brothers, I think. Doesn’t seem like anyone was left to take over the business after that, so whatever’s going on in Idle now, it ain’t guns.”

Jensen refrains from taking a crack at JD’s speculation. He’s seen too many Rangers and uniformed officers sidelined from active duty after assumptions like that. Wiping theories off the slate before a job’s even begun smacks of incompetence and laziness – JD Morgan’s obviously been behind a desk for too long, but Jensen values his job to much to tell him.

He presses, leaving Mo to his afternoon snooze. “What d’you know about what _is_ going on?”

“What I’ve got is pretty thin,” JD admits. “A couple of suspicious disappearances starting a few months back. Locals thought they had a few runaways on their hands. The reports filed on the missing aren’t much to go on – mostly loners, townies no one knew very well.”

“What made the locals think they needed a federal badge?”

“First body showed up last week. Some local doc did the best autopsy he knew how. I guess the guy wasn’t trained for this sort of thing, but it was pretty obvious the death was suspicious.”

Jensen sighs. He hasn’t even agreed to take the job but any body count adds weight to his shoulders. Telling himself that there was nothing he could have done stopped feeling like a comfort years ago.

“I’m thinkin’ drugs.” Morgan’s speculating again. “We haven’t picked up on any chatter through our informants that this is an organized group, or a branch off one of the Mexican cartels. Could be Californian, but all the signs point to an upstart group or a few rogue pushers. I mean, they’re not exactly being careful. They’ve got federal eyes taking notice after only a couple of weeks.”

“Still doesn’t seem like enough to go on,” Jensen says. “Usually, you’re givin’ me a lot more than theories and hearsay, Cap. All this because some politician is pulling strings with the Rangers?”

Morgan ignores the accusation. “Do you want the job or not?” he asks. “I’ve got a dozen guys who’d trip over the possibility of a one-man posting and a chance to play the hero in some little town. Not to mention it comes with a pretty hefty paycheck, thanks to _some politician_ pulling the strings.”

“Since when have I cared about the purse?”

“I thought you might be up for something different, Jensen,” Morgan jests. “You gonna start disappointing me now?”

“Fuck off,” Jensen fires back without much of an edge. His captain’s well aware that pushing Jensen’s buttons is the fastest way to make him take a new job. He adds insult to the jab. “Hey, Cap. Did I ever tell you that I named my dog after you?”

Morgan groans. Mo echoes the low sound in his sleep and Jensen rolls his eyes.

“Careful, Jensen. I can still change my mind and send you up to babysit a one-man station in the Territory.”

“Promises, promises,” Jensen mocks the casual threat. He’s heard it before. “You gonna send me the file?”

“It’s already on the way. You’ve got a good connection where you’re staying?”

Jensen hadn’t let on that he was in Texas again. Morgan might try to bring him in for a sit-down or something. Jensen doesn’t do meetings.

“I’ll find something around here ‘n get on my way in the next day or so.”

Morgan’s voice drops to a more serious tone, sounding like a Captain instead of a friend. “Good luck, Jensen. Whatever support you need, you just give me a call.”

He hangs up, leaving Jensen with a skull full of information and none of it helpful. Morgan might have been kidding, but a job like this is outside of Jensen’s usual sphere. He hates walking in with more questions than answers, and this posting’s got more unknowns than he’s really comfortable with. But Morgan hadn’t been lying about the payoff. If Rand McKellip, rising star in the cut-throat world of Secession politics, really is bankrolling the job, finishing this could give Jensen the out he’s been looking for.

Checking the map, Jensen’s at least a day or two out from Idle. He’d been on his way down to El Paso before checking in with Morgan – always a job to be had down at the border to pocket some quick cash – but he’s fine with turning around. Sure, the border gets you paid, but most of the time the money ain’t worth the trouble.

Jensen gets up, his leg brushing Mo’s side. The mutt flops over and whines, soft underbelly heaving with sleepy breaths. As with every other motel room he’s stayed at, Jensen hadn’t bothered to unpack much of anything. It’ll take no time at all to round up his stuff in the morning and clear out.

Jensen sighs, grabbing his wallet. He knows there’s an accessible satellite connection for a price down in the motel manager’s office. Mighty hard to keep a thing like that hidden from a man with Jensen’s attention to detail, but it might end up costing him more than the price of the room. He clips his gun into his belt holster and makes sure it’s visible – maybe he can wrangle a discount from intimidation.

“What d’ya say, Mo? Colorado sound appealing to you?”

Mo’s only answer is a resounding snore.

  


Blue sky meets the earth in a blinding line of sun-bleached rocks, low white clouds scalloped along the horizon. The skeletal arms of electrical pylons are raised over two lanes of rough brown asphalt that disappears in an apparition of heat at the limit of Jensen’s vision.

No speed limit to worry about in these parts; the Highway Patrol sticks to the major interstates and turnpikes, leaving back roads like this one free and clear.

A farmhouse windmill, its blades spinnin’ idly fifty yards off the road, is the only sign of life for miles in any direction. The Sabre whips by doing eighty-five, her intense drag pushing golden waves of low grass away from the shoulder. Jensen hasn’t passed another car in the last seventy miles as he cruises alone along the Texas border towards Colorado.

Jensen likes the border roads. Most are passable, hit-or-miss for a smooth ride, but Jensen would rather steer away from city routes and six lane thruways. The Secession States tended to leave wide buffers of deserted land between them, remnants of distrust from back during the days of the Division. They’d rather not encroach on one another, just in case, but that opened up a whole different world of problems.

The Union of Seceded States had established itself as an isolationist colony over a century ago. Jensen’s not sure why they bothered to call it the Union – could’ve just called the whole thing Texas. Fifty years back, during the Division when the remaining United States of America figured it deserved all that seceded land back, the Union had finally asserted its independence and broken away. California, getting stronger in the west, stepped in on the Union’s side, eager to keep the buffer the Secessionland provided, and followed suit with its own independence not long after. The whole damn Pacific coast had seceded in its own quiet revolution, unwilling to follow the course of Eastern or Central politics.

The Union government found isolationism had been hard to maintain without a solid border or the funds to defend it. With acres of open grasslands and a population that hadn’t seen real growth in nearly a century, contraband began seeping through the gaps. Petty smugglers who’d graduated to become gun dealers and drug runners passed merchandise through border towns left ravaged after the Division, getting away with it from the start because most folks in the Union had bigger problems.

Two decades back, when the illegal trades had reached their peak, it had been the Texas Rangers stepping up to curb the violence as local agencies gave into pressure, corruption, and bribery. More than a few local sheriff’s departments had gone under rather than fight foes who were better funded.

The Rangers had quickly grown into the largest law enforcement unit in the Secessionland, given jurisdiction throughout the country. Jensen’s always been proud to be numbered among them, joining up the moment he had a college degree in-hand. Four years spent earnin’ a piece of paper he was never gonna use, but it made his momma happy to frame it up in her front hall for the neighbors to admire. It was one of the least and the last things he could do to please his family.

Mo woofs, dragging Jensen’s eyes away from the road and out of idle thought. The mutt’s back hips are squirming around on the seat, and Jensen curses, pulling over.

“Couldn’t wait until dinner, huh?”

The pup lopes right out of the driver’s side door behind him, barking happily and taking off into the grass bordering the road, big paws kicking up dust and more than one disturbed brush sparrow. Insects rattle in a broken symphony coming from every direction, no other sounds to compete with.

“Mo!” Jensen punctuates his yell with a sharp whistle, hearing his mutt romping in the grass ten yards from the Sabre. He gives Mo another minute before stomping in after him, catching the pup chewing on a gnarled branch.

“It’s always playtime for you, huh?” Jensen complains, patting Mo on the back to hurry him back up to the car.

He could make Idle by dinnertime but he’s always preferred to get his first look at a town when the sun’s coming up, see how the place weathered the night. Although the sheriff’s expecting him around midday, Jensen’s plan is to roll in early and catch him off guard. There’s never a guarantee the local law’s gonna fall on Jensen’s side – better to get a solid read on the man right away so Jensen can do his job.

Jensen shakes his head as Mo jumps back into the Sabre, plopping down in the passenger seat and sticking his head right out the window.

Five years he’s been working these postings, forcing the bad element out of cities and towns that are cryin’ for help. Jensen believes in the Union, in the Secession. He’s never cared much that he’s a good deal poorer than he’d be if he worked in one of the big American cities. Hell, he hears that even the Californians pay their detectives better, but none of those corrupt, stuffed-shirt, overweight misdemeanor chasers get to do what Jensen does. The towns he works have families who want to get back to their peaceful living. It’s less than they deserve after all the problems the Secession inadvertently caused.

Idle, Colorado is the next in a long list of places Jensen’s been assigned to. JD Morgan has sent him all over the Union, from the murky waters of the Mississippi River to the lonely northern border with the Disputed Territories, under the authority of the Ranger’s Office of Special Projects. Sometimes he has help, but he prefers workin’ alone. Partners have a way of making a man divide his attention and Jensen likes to focus on the job.

Not like there’s much else for him to focus on besides the mutt riding shotgun.

“You gettin’ hungry?” Jensen asks Mo as the Sabre growls back onto the pavement. The pup ignores him in favor of letting his tongue drag in the wind, jowls flapping. Jensen wishes road trips were half as much fun for him. “We’ll stop soon, buddy.”

The promise is more for him than for the dog; Jensen’s stomach is rumbling for highway cuisine, but he knows he won’t pass a diner for another hundred miles. Beyond that, hopefully a motel with a decent bed or else he’ll be sleeping in the Sabre’s backseat with Mo drooling on him.

The life of a Texas Ranger… Jensen sighs. It doesn’t get much better than this.

  


Idle, Colorado isn’t what Jensen had expected.

“Should've named it Stupor,” Jensen mutters to himself as he steps out of the Sabre in front of a squat building with dented aluminum siding.

JD told Jensen that Rand McKellip had some sort of interest in the place, but for the life of him, Jensen can’t figure out what that could be. Unless the politician has a hard on for butter-and-sugar corn, there ain’t much else to the town besides fields and farms.

Idle sits east of where the great Rockies fall down from the heavens, steep slopes giving way to canyonlands and softer valleys until the plains sweep across, spreading towards the sunrise for hundreds of miles. When he drove in this morning, Jensen pictured storm clouds dropping over the mountains, heavy and thick with the rain they’d been waiting to let go. Idle must see some fantastic storms.

The town’s surrounded by foothills and shallow canyons to the west and fields to the east. Jensen imagines there are plenty of family farms to give Idle some agricultural weight, but there’s gotta be more to the place than just a hearty crop of growers exporting corn and sugar beets. Jensen wouldn’t be here otherwise.

It doesn’t seem so bad at first glance – Idle’s got all the staples of a small, home-grown western town, plus a few extras. It’s the extras that Jensen has to look twice at.

A pawn shop leases space next to the barber’s, a classic red and blue stripped pole clashing with a vulgar neon sign in the next window over, and a gambling hall in what used to be a lodge for the Veterans of the Secession Wars, from the looks of it. Idle’s a mix of small town innocence and trouble, money comin’ in from all the wrong places. Farm communities don’t usually look like this.

Jensen had barely seen a soul on the drive in. A few trucks heading out for early farm shifts, plus one or two early birds on downtown streets, but there’s no one else awake to meet the gray sunrise that cuts across the plains. He’s relieved to see lights on in the sheriff’s station at least, and a lone vehicle out front. Leaving Mo in the Sabre, Jensen walks into the station with a purpose.

It’s high time he got started.

No one greets Jensen when he saunters in but he doesn’t announce himself, soaking up the details. He’s in a typical two-bit station, outfitted with just the basics. In the corner of the main room, the Union flag hangs on a rusted pole next to the state flag of Colorado. Two smaller desks sit empty behind a larger reception desk; Jensen leans over and sees thin files and a blank message pad next to the phone. This is enough for a town like Idle to get by if no one bothered them, but once the bigger problems rolled in…

“Excuse me.” A woman in khaki browns steps out of a back office, glaring at Jensen. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m with the Rangers,” Jensen answers, swiping his coat aside to let the silver on his belt do the talkin’. “Jensen Ackles.”

“Shit, right.” She curses like she’s used to it. Walking towards him, Jensen notices her most obvious feature – fierce blue eyes that sharpen in on his badge. Her dark blonde hair curls around her freckled cheekbones too haphazardly to be styled that way. “I knew you’d be coming but I lost track of the day in this mess. The name’s Cassidy.”

“Last or first?”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t answer. Jensen grudgingly begins to like her on the spot.

“So you’re the Ranger who’s gonna fix all this?”

“Been doin’ this job for a long time now,” he says. Cassidy doesn’t strike Jensen as the type to be plied with some Ranger spiel. “I’ve worked in a lot of towns like this, so I should be able to help y’all get things under control. I know I’m early, but I wanted to talk to Sheriff Corbin. He around?”

The corners of Cassidy’s mouth pinch inward. “I guess it’s been a day or two since you last got briefed. Corbin’s gone.”

“He left?”

“Disappeared,” Cassidy says, tremor in her voice saying she’s not used to sharing the news yet. “He never came into work yesterday and no one’s been able to track him down.”

Jensen steps up to the desk that Cassidy’s kept as a buffer between them, firing questions. He’s on the job – no time for pleasant conversation.

“When’s the last time anyone talked to him? Does he have a vehicle you could radio in an APB on? And who’s runnin’ things around here if he’s been gone for more than a day?”

Cassidy doesn’t flinch. Jensen likes her with fewer objections. “As far as I know, I was the last one to talk to him. Must’ve been the day before last when he left here for the night. I thought he was heading right home like he usually does, but I don’t know if he ever made it. He’s got a Mustang he uses on the job, lights and everything. It’d be pretty hard to miss.” Her hands go to her hips, challenging. “And I’m running things. Is that gonna be a problem?”

“I don’t have a say in how this office works,” Jensen tells her. “If you’re the ranking officer, I’m not gonna argue. It just means you’ll be talking to me an awful lot.”

“I’m thrilled already.” The joke lands flat. Nothing funny in the situation and they know it. “Look, you don’t have to sugar-coat anything for me, Ranger.”

Jensen nods, but he’d figured as much where Cassidy is concerned.

She sighs. “I’ve only worked in Idle for a few years but I’ve never been through anything like what I’ve been seeing. Newcomers drifting in all the time – I thought they were just looking for work, but they’ve never been out to the farms.”

“Newcomers?” Jensen latches on to that detail. “How many?”

“Maybe a dozen in the last twelve months, and mostly younger. They could have been couples or a few friends starting over, you know? But with everything else, I figured they might be a part of whatever racket’s taken hold here.” Cassidy drops her head. “Corbin thought it was nothing at first, but I kept telling him…” She sighs. “Think I’ll ever get the chance to tell him ‘told you so’?”

Jensen shakes his head. “Until we know what happened to him, I can’t tell you no.”

The office goes quiet. Jensen can see in Cassidy’s glacial eyes that she’s thinkin’ through all the possibilities, each one worse than the last. He gives her a minute, lets her work through the implications of the Sheriff’s vanishing act. It’s a setback for Jensen, but it’s also a big piece of evidence. If Corbin’s disappearance is connected to Idle’s recent problems, the culprits are stepping up their game and Jensen’s on the clock.

“So, where do you usually start with a job like this?” Cassidy asks, cool and collected again.

“I heard you have a body.”

“Had.”

“What?”

“We had a body,” Cassidy says. “Idle doesn’t exactly have a coroner’s office or anywhere good to store a body, so after Dr. Padalecki took a look at it, we had it sent up to the coroner in Hastings. Standard procedure, not that we’ve had many dead bodies to worry about.”

“This Doctor,” Jensen says, not even attempting the guy’s name, “he knows how to perform an autopsy?”

“He’s just a regular doctor, I don’t know if they’re all trained in this sort of thing, but he documented what he could, took pictures and everything, and collected samples for the county coroner.”

“And he could rule it a homicide?”

“It wasn’t much of a question. Trust me, Ranger.”

Jensen’s used to small towns makin’ do with the thing’s they’ve got, but he doesn’t want some backwoods M.D. who’s better with a hunting knife than a surgical scalpel making calls for him.

“Where can I find the Doc?”

Cassidy smiles for the first time and the expression does wonders to her already attractive profile. “I’ll take you over there, but don’t call him Doc. He tells everyone to call him Jared.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Jensen keeps his groan silent.

Cassidy leads the way out of the station, locking up behind her.

“You were the only one in there?” Jensen asks.

“We’ve never needed more than three officers and a few admin workers. Corbin’s obviously not around and Davis covers the nightshift, so he left when I got in,” Cassidy says, eyes on the Sabre. She smirks. “Your car’s not obvious at all.”

He considers the aerodynamic lines of his older model Sabre. It had never been a popular car, rarer and rarer to see their wide frames on the Union highways these days. _Cars_ in California barely live up to the name – little computerized vehicles that practically drive themselves and run on cow manure or something ridiculous – and the U.S. had turned to public transportation and unreliable electric cars after they were cut off from the worldwide oil supply.

Jensen appreciates the Sabre’s sleek profile as much as he does her intimidating chrome grill, baring her mechanical teeth. The Sabre conveys power, but she also means loyalty – Jensen has spent countless hours under her hood, keeping her running better than she had the day he bought her. She’s a classic, no one can argue that, but she’s pretty damn conspicuous.

“It not supposed to be?”

“Just an observation,” Cassidy says. She steps past the driver’s side door and Mo bumps his spotted nose against the window, sharp bark tripping Cassidy up. “The hell… You’ve got a dog too?”

Jensen shrugs. “Guess I never read the Ranger rulebook. Go on ahead. I’ll follow you to the Doc’s office.”

He shoves Mo back into the passenger seat and pulls out behind Cassidy’s sedan. The mutt’s breath fogs up the window, snout smearing the glass as his eyes follow pedestrians on the sidewalk.

There are more people out and about than when Jensen drove in, Idle coming to life. Typical small town fodder – folks who’d moved in lookin’ for a quiet life mixed in with the ones who grew up here and never made it out. Whether they’re just peaceful folk or they’re bitter and resigned to life on the fringes, they’re never much for causing trouble unless a foreign element corrupts the balance. One drop of acid changing the entire reaction.

Cassidy leads Jensen to a clinic that occupies the far corner of a two-story brick building. It had only taken five minutes to cross downtown Idle, two spent sitting at poorly programmed traffic lights. He cracks both front windows for Mo and leaves the pup with a rawhide strip he grabs out of the trunk.

The name on the clinic’s door isn’t the mouthful of letters Cassidy had spouted.

  
**William Conners, M.D.  
GENERAL FAMILY PRACTICE**   


Cassidy tries the door and finds it locked.

“It’s a little early for a doc to be in, isn’t it?”

She shakes her head. “Not like Jared’s ever far away.” Turning to an intercom and keypad Jensen hadn’t noticed, Cassidy hits a few numbers and static hisses.

 _“Hello?”_

“Jared? It’s Cassidy. I’ve got someone here who needs to talk to you. Sheriff’s business, you know what I mean?”

The distorted voice on the other end of the intercom doesn’t hesitate.

 _“Hang on, I’ll buzz you in.”_

A mechanized lock disengages a few seconds later and Cassidy walks into the clinic, Jensen on her heels.

“He lets you in, just like that?” Jensen asks, wondering to himself how well the Doc and this attractive deputy know one another. When he’s on a job, every fact matters until it doesn’t, and that includes personal relationships.

“Jared trusts me, and besides, I’m sure he took a peek out his window to check who I was bringing in with me.” Cassidy smiles. “He lives in the apartment upstairs, didn’t I tell you that?”

“Must’ve slipped your mind,” Jensen mutters, knowing full well she’ll hear him.

The waiting room is small, cozy. Taupe walls meant to be comfortably neutral and the carpet is a forgettable shade of tan. Jensen can picture an older woman behind the check-in desk, graying hair pulled back as she sorts through patient files, earning a decent paycheck but happier to be out of the house and away from her kids for half a day.

Framed pictures around the desk give the place more personality. With sunlight falling in through the blinds, Jensen looks over photographs of the same older man on various outdoor vacations. He’s a hearty guy with a wide face and deep laugh lines, thick arms holding a fish in every other picture. In some, the man is surrounded by grandkids, Jensen assumes. If the Doc’s older, this might not be his first go-around with a dead body. Could be Jensen gets something useful out of the guy.

The door behind Jensen opens, bringing a burst of fresh, morning air inside along with a tall, thin-lipped stranger. The man looks between Cassidy and Jensen, yawning and waving to the deputy.

“Sorry about the early call, but it’s official business,” Cassidy tells him.

Shaking sleep out of his eyes, the new arrival takes a deep breath. “I figured it had to be,” he says, turning to Jensen. “I’m Jared Padalecki, and this is my office.”

“Ranger Ackles.” Jensen keeps his introduction curt but shakes Jared’s hand. “I didn’t see your name on the door.”

Jared sighs. “Technically, this is Bill’s practice. I’m here most of the time ‘cause he’s got, what?” Jared looks back at Cassidy, “seven grandkids now?”

“Eight,” she clarifies.

“Right. Bill’s out of town half the time anyway, so he figured he might as well bring on another doctor. He’s in and out for some of the older patients, though. Guess they’re just not comfortable with me yet.”

Jensen’s reevaluating quickly. The Doc’s age is a surprise – Jensen wouldn’t put him past his early thirties – but not as big of one as the man himself. Without having to ask, Jensen knows Jared’s not from Idle. He’s an import, a piece that doesn’t fit. A healthy brown complexion and a cowboy’s build, Jared stands lean in all the right places, feet apart in a wide, comfortable stance. Jared definitely doesn’t come from Secession stock; Jensen would peg him as Californian, their breezy personalities and magazine good-looks set them apart in a crowd. Whatever Jared is, he doesn’t belong in Idle and Jensen’s immediately alert.

“So, a Ranger, huh?” Jared hides his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. “I’ve never met one of you guys.”

“He’s here about Gabe Hicks’ body,” Cassidy cuts in. “The Rangers sent him to head up the investigation into the disappearances.”

“That’s what I thought.” Jared’s posture sags, an extra-large plaid shirt loose around his shoulders. “I’ve got the file I wrote up, plus all the photos and information locked up in the back office if you want to see it.”

Jensen nods. “And I’ve got a few questions for you, Doc, if you don’t mind.”

“Me?” Jared looks at Cassidy for help but she shakes her head. “I can tell you about the preliminary work I did on the body, but I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“Everyone’s got something to tell,” Jensen says. “They might not know it ‘til they’re asked the right questions.”

The Doc hardly looks convinced. “Sure – I mean, anything you want to know. We’re not open here for a while, so whatever you need, I guess. The office is back this way.”

Cassidy doesn’t follow when Jared turns around.

“Do you mind if I head back to the station? Days like these, I never know what’s going to happen. I should be there just in case anyone –”

“It’s not a problem,” Jensen says. He’d been about to suggest the same thing. “I’ll take care of the Doc and meet you back there.”

“Radio in if you need anything before then.” At the door, Cassidy looks back. “And stop calling him Doc, seriously. He hates that.”

“Whatever.” Cassidy definitely doesn’t hear his groan this time.

  


Jared’s back office wasn’t built with him in mind, Jensen notes. The Doc could stretch his arms out and touch drywall on either side, but he crouches behind the desk without commenting, pulling a fat folder from a safe on the floor and handing it to Jensen.

“I didn’t want – you know,” Jared says, wavering. “I figured they should be kept locked up.”

“Good.” Jensen glances at the report clipped to the inside of the folder, wincing when he sees the Doc’s scrawl. Damn doctors and their hieroglyphics. There are plenty of words on the report, but Jensen’s got no shot at decoding ‘em. Pictures are more his speed.

The Doc watches carefully as Jensen flips through the macabre photographs, wounds and bruises cataloged from various unappealing angles, and he’s struggling to keep his mouth shut.

Jensen clears his throat. “Tell me about the autopsy.”

“My notes are there –“

“I don’t read _doctor_ ,” Jensen says gruffly. “I’m askin’ for your words, what you remember. Not everything makes it into the notes. Was this your first autopsy?”

“My first murder victim,” Jared admits quietly, like he knows it’s not something to boast about. “Hunting accidents are pretty common around here. We had two woodsmen pass away last summer, and I filled out those reports. And there was a woman who died from an overdose a few months back.”

“An overdose of what?”

“The official lab report went to the coroner in Hastings, but I heard it was heroin. It fit with my initial guess.”

“A guess that didn’t make it into your report, right?”

The Doc nods, conceding Jensen’s original point.

“So, Gabe Hicks…”

Jared sighs. “Sheriff Corbin brought his body in last week and said it had been found in one of those rundown lots heading north on Ashburn Road. I told him I could call up to Hastings and get the coroner to drive down for something this big, but the Sheriff told me to handle the report.”

Jensen goes through the photographs again one by one as the Doc describes his findings, wrapping his words around the visuals he’s faced with.

“He had three gunshot wounds; two were thru-and-thrus. One below the collarbone, another punctured his liver, and the third went straight through his forehead, front to back. The bullet from the head shot was the only one I recovered – a twenty two.”

Jensen can’t help the gut-deep satisfaction, hearing that he’s carrying a bigger gun.

“And the other injuries?”

“He was beaten before he died,” Jared says. It’s hard for Jensen to read his voice, but there’s less detachment than he’s used to. The Doc has little in common with some of the hardened, soulless coroners he’s met over the years and Jensen’s not sure which attitude is worse. “Are you gonna take the file with you?”

“Something wrong with that?” Jensen asks.

“No.” Jared lets out a deep breath. “I’m glad. I didn’t really want it here anymore. Gabe was just a kid, you know? He was barely twenty-one, did pretty decent back in high school, I heard.”

“You knew the victim?”

“I know his family. Idle’s a small place, Ranger,” Jared says, defensive. “I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”

Jensen likes the guy’s bite – gives him something to poke at. “And you’ve been here long enough to figure that out?”

“What do you mean?”

“C’mon,” Jensen says. “All I needed was one look to know that you’re not from around here, Doc.”

“You don’t need to keep calling me Doc,” Jared growls and adjusts his posture, standing with his hands square on his hips. “Where I’m from doesn’t matter.”

The Doc’s height and breadth alone might be intimidating, but physical force has been no match for Jensen in the past. Jared’s out of his depth, visibly eager to get the conversation done with, though he’s inextricably tied to the whole mess, professionally and emotionally.

“I’ll be the one judgin’ if it matters or not,” Jensen says, posture loose to tell the Doc that his physical challenge is being ignored. “How long have you been livin’ in Idle?”

“Wait, am I being interrogated, here?”

“Just a professional conversation. I’m not tryin’ to get you riled up, but if I need to ask again–”

“Two years,” Jared cuts in without embellishment.

Long enough to bond with the people he sees day-to-day, Jensen considers, but he remains an outsider, visibly apart. The apartment upstairs might be the Doc’s temporary home, but this isn’t his office. No cheap frames with Jared’s dimpled expressions cataloging family vacations and favored hunting spots on the walls, and nothing to match his personality, what little Jensen’s seen of it.

“Is it a problem?” Jared asks when Jensen’s kept silent for a full minute. “I’m not an outsider here.”

“Sure ya are,” Jensen says. “Unless you grew up here and have Idle in your blood, you’re an outsider. Gotta have that pull to stay even when everything in you is screamin’ to get the hell outta here. Is that how you feel?”

Jared says nothing.

“But no, it’s not a problem,” Jensen adds, admitting to himself that he’s been nothing but an outsider for the last ten years of his life.

The Doc narrows his eyes, teeth clenched, mustering the will not to snap. Jensen’s gun, secured in its hand-tooled holster at his hip, is usually a pretty good deterrent.

His interview’s been derailed, but Jensen figures he’s got most of the important stuff already. No sense gettin’ the Doc even more worked up for nothing, though Jensen’s short on entertainment these days.

“Anything else you can think of–” Jensen starts, but the Doc cuts in with a sharp shake of his head.

“You’ll get whatever you need from my report.” Jensen knows Jared’s not offering to translate his medical scribble. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to lock this place up and get back upstairs.”

Jensen follows the Doc to the front door of the clinic without a gesture of complaint. He might need to talk to the guy again; no sense burning bridges yet even if he’s got the torch in hand.

At the door, Jared waits with a terse expression for Jensen to exit, spinning and locking the door behind them. Turning back, Jared sees the Sabre and the spotted nose sticking out the passenger side window. Mo woofs as soon as he’s noticed, bouncing on the seat. Unexpectedly, the Doc’s mouth goes soft, the corners of his eyes losing their tightness.

“Is that your dog?”

“Nah,” Jensen jokes gruffly. “Must’ve snuck in there when I wasn’t lookin’.” His mutt keeps pushing, trying to force his head through the window. Jensen whistles. “Mo! Calm down, I’m coming.”

“He looks like he’s still a puppy,” Jared says. “What kind?”

“Half mutt, half blockhead.” Jensen enjoys the laugh that gets out of the Doc, but he dismisses it as an insignificant feeling. Jared has his uses, and Jensen doesn’t anticipate any of them going beyond professional. “I’ll be in touch, then.”

“There was one more thing I left out of the report,” Jared calls out before Jensen can circle around the Sabre. The Doc’s arms are crossed over his chest. “You probably haven’t driven up Ashburn Road yet, but those empty lots are a real mess. Rusted metal and old farm debris, trash and bottles from the kids who use them as party spots.”

“That’s where Hicks’ body was found?”

“That’s what Sheriff Corbin told me.” The Doc hesitates; Jensen lets him get there on his own time. “I just thought it was strange that the body was pretty clean.”

“Clean?”

“Yeah. I expected the body to look as rough as those lots, carry some of that dirt and trash with it, but I didn’t find much.”

A suspicion that’d tickled Jensen’s brain inside the clinic resurfaces. “Why’d you leave it out of your report?”

Jared has enough sense not to look guilty about it. He’s tellin’ Jensen now, and Jared considers that effort enough. “The Sheriff told me that Gabe Hicks was found in one of those lots. I didn’t have any reason to question him, but I think you’re the kind of cop who questions everything.” He shakes his head. “Just thought I should mention it.”

The Doc steps around the corner of the building, probably heading back to the upstairs apartment. Jensen’s suspicion starts taking shape, no longer just a thread of an idea. He holds onto it all the way back to the station, Mo sniffing at the new scents on Jensen’s jeans and barking happily during the whole ride.

  


Jensen holds the room phone to his ear and waits impatiently for the line to connect. The number he’d dialed by heart lets him bypass the Special Projects switchboard and Morgan’s obnoxiously nosy assistant.

The rough voice picks up midway through the fourth ring. “Morgan.”

“I was beginning to think you were takin’ a day off,” Jensen says.

“Dealing with you, I’d need more than just a day. I hope you’re calling to tell me you’ve already wrapped the Idle job and that I can add you to the books as having the fastest clean-up in history.”

“That record’s gonna have to wait.”

JD laughs. “I figured. Alright, let me have it.”

Jensen runs through the case, what he’s been able to pick up in his first twenty-four hours in Idle, anyway, while he walks in circles around the motel room. It’s a clean establishment – small, barely more than a strip of rooms off the highway – but the mattress is firm under his back at night and the bathroom’s lacking any mysterious stains. Jensen’s spent nights in places much, much worse.

“And I ran down the names of the people Cassidy said had moved in recently.”

“Any flags?” JD asks.

“Most were just regular folks movin’ to town, nothing suspicious. I checked employee records at the farms and local stores just to make sure, but there were two or three I couldn’t track down. Could be part of whoever’s pushing product here.”

His captain considers the idea. “You think it’s drugs.”

“It fits,” Jensen says. “Rise in petty crime, windows being broken and building’s being trashed.”

“Shit kids do when they’re high.”

“The operation’s gotta be pretty new, though,” Jensen speculates. “I’d say not more than six months old, no time for a network to develop. They’ve got people hooked, but there’re probably only a few dealers.”

“Cutting out the middle-man,” JD adds.

“No time to hire middle-men. They might figure they don’t need to if no law’s stepped up to stop ‘em and if no one takes ‘em out soon, they’ll have the run of the place by the end of the year.”

JD hums. “Seems pretty straightforward.”

Jensen doesn’t answer. He could easily peg this as a rogue group of drug dealers who’ve broken off from one of the larger cartels. Hell, they probably stole whatever product they’re selling in Idle, earning cash and planning to move on as soon as they’re out. But there are plenty of pieces that don’t fit and Jensen’s riled by them. There’s McKellip’s involvement for one, as well as the missing Sheriff to consider.

He keeps those ideas to himself.

“I guess so.”

“Is everything working out in town? Getting what you need from the Sheriff’s department?”

“Cassidy’s been helping as much as she can.” Meaning as much as he lets her, Jensen doesn’t say. “Idle’s got a good connection – satellite set up by some old Army engineer who likes building things. The guy ran wiring all the way to the station and for a price, he’ll hook anyone up. Seem like the town’d be doing just fine if it weren’t for the drugs moving through, I imagine.”

“Well, keep me up to speed on this,” Morgan drawls. “I know McKellip’ll be calling for an update. The man’s a fucking pit bull, I’m telling you.”

“Hey Captain, did I ever tell you–”

“Shut up, Jensen.”

The line goes dead and Jensen’s still laughing.

 

  
**  
PART TWO   
**   


  


  


The coffee in this place sucks. It’s not stand-a-spoon-up-in-it bad, but the aroma lands somewhere between microwaveable instant coffee and scorching hot asphalt. This ain’t the only breakfast place in Idle, but Jensen’s stuck behind a plate of biscuits and gravy, and he’s too hungry to get up and leave.

Cassidy finds Jensen there at a quarter to seven on his third morning in Idle, taking the chair across from him without asking. Her uniform’s clean, unwrinkled, and her badge clings to the brown polyester over her chest where it’s plenty visible. Jensen, in typical no-nonsense jeans and a button-down, is less polished but thinks little of the differences between them.

“You’d tell me if you found something, right?”

Jensen swallows, stops his hand mid-reach on the way to the coffee mug. Not a good idea.

“You think I found something?”

“Just making sure we’re working towards the same end here,” she says, getting a whiff of the coffee and wrinkling her nose. “And that you know I can help.”

“This isn’t my first job.”

“Mine either.”

He stares, and Cassidy looks right back. He hasn’t read anything to say she’s not a good cop – he’d asked Morgan to pull up her jacket the first night he’d stayed in Idle, making the most of the satellite connection that was accessible from the station. Cassidy has worked a number of jobs up and down the western Secession States, landing in Idle a few years ago.

She leans her forearms on the table, blue eyes lacking humor. “Look, I’ve known a few Rangers. Trust no one, that’s the code, right?” Jensen keeps chewing, another forkful of spicy sausage to appease his empty stomach, and she sighs. “You don’t have to trust me. Hell, to be honest, I’m not entirely sold on you being here,” she says. “This town is my job – it’s what I care about, and if that means helping you out with whatever you’ll need, I’m there. Trust me on that much, at least.”

Jensen’s waitress, a petite woman with hard lines on her face and a smoker’s voice, swings by with a cup of coffee for Cassidy – must be standard procedure. The deputy doesn’t touch it.

“I stopped by Corbin’s house again last night,” Jensen says after a dry swallow. He asked for water ten minutes ago, but this dive must only serve their burnt-tire-flavored roast. “Didn’t see any sign that he’d been back.”

Cassidy’s eyes narrow but her posture eases, accepting Jensen’s silent apology.

“I don’t think the Sheriff’s coming back,” she continues down Jensen’s line of thinking. “It doesn’t feel right, whatever’s going on. I thought he had a handle on things a couple weeks ago, before things got bad and he brought in Gabe Hicks’ body, but as soon as he got word the Rangers were sending someone, then…”

Cassidy pauses as a long shadow darkens their table. Jensen’s eyes travel up and _up_ to see the Doc grinning down at them.

“Hey, Cass.”

She smiles, more personality in it than she’s given Jensen all morning. “Is Bill working in the office today?”

“It’s his last day in before he heads down to Houston for a month.” Jared acknowledges Jensen with the barest of nods, turning around to find an open table.

The Doc’s hair is damp at the ends from a recent shower, his t-shirt crisp and loose around his waist. The v-neck cut dips low enough for Jensen to see a dusting of hair darkening Jared’s skin and the shadow in the dip of his throat, details Jensen’s long-suffering libido spends way too long contemplating.

“Why don’t you join us?” Cassidy asks. Jensen cocks his head, stares her down, but she challenges with a simple shrug. “I’m sure the Ranger here doesn’t mind, I’ve already crashed his lonely breakfast.”

The Doc grabs a chair, elbows spreading the width of the tabletop. Stabbing at a biscuit, Jensen doesn’t contribute to the conversation between the deputy and the doctor, eating becomes his singular focus.

Jared clears his throat a few minutes later, twirling the glass of cranberry juice set in front of him. The waitress had been kind enough to serve him something besides charred coffee, but she continued to ignore Jensen’s glare.

“Can I ask if there’s been any progress on finding the Sheriff?”

Cassidy shoots Jensen a look. “We don’t exactly have the resources for a manhunt, Jared.” Her voice is stretched, careful. “I’m looking into some things, but it’s been four days.”

“Meaning, you don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Meaning,” Jensen cuts in with a snarl, “I don’t think your Sheriff wants to be found.”

Two heads swing in Jensen’s direction; the Doc asks the question, “What?”

Cassidy suddenly finds the table interesting, rubbing at a smudge. She’s listening though, and Jensen’s surprised at her lack of reaction. Jared’s too, but he strikes Jensen as naturally more curious. That and he didn’t generally have to translate suspicions into theories every day.

Jensen hasn’t shared this with Cassidy, keeping his cards hidden, but they might be walkin’ the same path regardless.

“The timing of all this is pretty strange,” Jensen says, intentionally vague. Cassidy might trust the Doc and his easy grin, but Jensen hasn’t got him figured yet. He’s been wrong before. “You’ve both said things to make me question just how involved your Sheriff might’ve been in the trouble you’ve been having.”

Jared’s mouth opens and then quickly shuts, brain likely working back on what he said to Jensen during their only interview. No argument comes from either one of them. Jensen takes the moment of silence to scrape the last of his breakfast onto his fork, pulling out his wallet while he’s chewing and dropping a bill on the table.

“I’ve got a few things to check out this morning.” He has no intention of sticking around for another one-on-one with the Doc if Cassidy decides to abandon him again. “I’ll check back ‘round at the station this afternoon,” Jensen adds for Cassidy. “Y’all enjoy breakfast.”

Grabbing a to-go bag from the table’s lone empty chair, Jensen nods and heads for the door carrying Mo’s stack of plain pancakes. The mutt had better appreciate the food – Jensen’s regretting his own breakfast order as his stomach rolls.

Mo’s whining at the door when Jensen gets back to the room, leaping at his heels as soon as the mutt gets a whiff of the pancakes. Jensen pulls out his notes and adds new information, listening to a chorus of slobbers and licks as Mo chows down.

Three days in Idle and Jensen doesn’t have a hell of a lot to show for it. Most folks go about their business as if Jensen’s not poking his nose into their lives. There’s little to interrupt the lazy pace of life in the western farming town, but Jensen’s not fooled. Idle’s the perfect stop for rogue dealers, out of the way of the main transport routes. There’s nothing to the west besides more empty space, uninhabited land stretching all the way to the Union border, and miles of flat grasslands running east into Kansas.

Jensen has seen what drug money has bought – and paid for – in town: gambling joints, pawn dealers, and more than a few warm bodies walkin’ the streets at night to make a quick buck to feed their new and dangerous habits. Idle’s got a dark stain on its quaint fabric and it’s startin’ to spread.

One dead body and two open missing person cases are already on Idle’s books. The Sheriff makes three. Reading the files on the first two, Jensen draws similarities from what he’s gathered about the late Gabe Hicks. All were young adults, carving out their lives in Idle instead of moving on to college or trade school. Easy, impressionable, and naïve – good prey for runners to pick out and coax into doing their dirty work, helping them lay low in town.

Hopefully the road doesn’t end abruptly for the other two the way it had for Gabe Hicks.

Mo’s licking the last fluffy crumbs off his plate. Jensen gets the mutt settled with some water and a rawhide.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll be back in no time,” he says, patting Mo on the back and avoiding those nipping teeth at the same time. “I’ve gotta go ’n talk to a few ladies about their connections. I bet that sounds boring to a pup like you, huh? You can come with me later tonight, alright?”

Mo barks like he gets it.

“Smart dog.”

  


There’s a crackle in the air from the storm line that’s just passed through, an eerie calm left in the wake of its natural violence. Darkness melts from the sky above, leaving the tarnished gray of twilight to prevail until the light’s gone completely.

The Sabre’s parked alone in an empty lot, buildings sitting abandoned on either side. Jensen gave up driving half an hour ago after taking a ride out to more than one outlying farm. If his drug dealers have a central hideout for business, Jensen’s willing to bet his badge that it’s out of the way – an old warehouse or foreclosed farm property. No luck so far.

He’s got a drive-thru burger settling in his stomach, Mo’s brown eyes keeping a lookout for squirrels through the windshield. Not much for human eyes to pick out, but the mutt won’t stop staring.

The day had been a bust, only picking up shreds of information from hookers who were too tired to talk even when Jensen waved fifty dollar bills in their faces. Trade must be pretty healthy – and their supply reliable – to wear them out like that. After that, he’d been forced indoors when the first rainclouds blotted out the sun, working with Cassidy back at the station and going through every crime reported in Idle over the last three years. The stack of cases had been thin and unhelpful. Now Jensen’s got little else to pursue besides an old-fashioned stake-out, haunting the streets at night to find some sort of action that’ll break his case.

Jensen’s always liked working alone, relying on his skills to finish a job. Felt that way about his personal life, too. He figures he’ll want to settle at some point, reward himself with the dream of fifty acres, no one pushing him in any one direction. He’s got to earn enough to get it first, wash the blood off his hands and finally start living. Give himself a shot at belonging somewhere, even if he’s the only body for a hundred miles, instead of being the outsider.

That line of thought takes Jensen’s mind back to the Doc. He’d printed off the guy’s record at the station this afternoon thanks to JD’s unmatched skills at tracking people down. Jared Padalecki was definitely Californian by birth; he grew up in Sacramento and graduated from one of the medical schools around the San Francisco Bay. Everything read as normal until two and a half years ago when the Doc pulled up roots and immigrated to the Union – a strange choice for anyone from the Union’s more prosperous and advanced western neighbor – leaving nothing behind to give a reason should anyone go looking.

And Jensen knows there has to be a reason. You don’t see a man like Jared out here tendin’ the sick in a small town for not a whole lot more than room and board if there wasn’t something giving him chase. The Doc’s looking over his shoulder, that’s for sure. Might be something dangerous lurking in his past, or Jared’s reason could be as mundane as wanting to escape from an overbearing family, Jensen’s got no idea.

Despite only meeting twice, neither time all that pleasant of a memory, Jensen’s been thinking about Jared more than he ought to. The Doc’s an outsider, and Jensen feels a grudging sort of kinship with the man, but Jared’s been accepted in Idle on a level Jensen envies when he stops to consider things.

Beyond the tint of the Sabre’s windshield, headlights cut through the night on the road ahead.

Mo whines and Jensen leans forward. One car’s not much to wonder at, but three pairs of headlights all in a row set his mind running, especially when he sees the reflective paint flash on the side panel of the middle car, caught in the beam of a high street lamp.

It’s the Sheriff’s Mustang.

The flanking cars are black, barely distinguishable from the night, but their makes are conspicuous. Jensen’s not seeing rugged farm trucks or modest sedans – just a single flash of chrome tips off his instincts.

Jensen radios Cassidy. “Just saw the Sheriff’s ride heading north on route 45.”

Static comes first, then Cassidy’s swift response. _“Are you sure?”_

“Yup. Two other vehicles in front and behind. I’m gonna follow them.”

 _“You can wait for back up.”_

“You’re the only back up I know of,” Jensen says, lips touching the warm plastic transmitter. “Come in quietly, I’ve got a feeling something’s up.”

 _“Got it. Be careful.”_

The Sabre roars to life. Jensen snaps his fingers at his pup.

“Down, Mo.” His mutt’s heard the same command, in that very tone, before. Mo jumps into the footwell, curling up on the floor mat and looking at Jensen with those big, shiny eyes. “I know, buddy,” he says. “Just stay put.”

Route 45 is two lanes of patchwork asphalt heading north out of Idle. Beyond town limits, there are no pull offs, no tire tracks leading away from the road, so Jensen keeps driving. Ten minutes out, he sees a flash out the corner of his eye, rounding to see three vehicles parked fifty yards off the road with their headlights on.

Jensen slows the Sabre and reaches for his radio.

“Looks like they’ve stopped seven miles up 45,” he says, never taking his eyes off the cars.

 _“I’m five minutes away,”_ Cassidy radios back.

Hell, this could be over in five minutes.

From the side of the road, windows down, he keeps a keen eye on the vehicles, sees movement but can’t make out the specifics. The Sheriff’s Mustang is obscured behind the other two cars and after a minute, a shadow breaks the beam of the headlights. Jensen can’t see anything back the way he came, just plain darkness. He waits, gun in hand, for Cassidy to show.

Until a massive crack thunders through the air and for a moment, Jensen thinks another storm’s rolling in. But there’s really no mistaking the blowback of a revolver, and Jensen has no choice but to gun the Sabre’s engine and roar off road towards the cluster of vehicles.

His tires spin up wet clumps of dirt as the Sabre tears over the two ruts in the grass. Pulling close enough to trap the other cars in his headlights, Jensen stops and kicks open the door, crouching behind the safety of the metal just as two more shots echo out into the night.

“Texas Ranger!” Jensen yells, a calamity of shouts and engines firing obscuring his voice. “Put your weapons down!”

One car throttles past the Sabre, its massive tires handling the rough ground too easily; Jensen doesn’t have a prayer of tagging the plate number. There are two cars left and one’s the Mustang. Even without knowing whose side the Sheriff is shooting for, Jensen’s got at least two gunmen to worry about.

“Throw your weapons down or I will shoot!”

A barrage of bullets slamming into the ground, a lucky few hitting the Sabre’s door panel, is the only answer Jensen gets. His ears are splitting, ringing with the pressure of high-decibel shots all around him. Jensen looks into the car and sees Mo crouched down beneath the passenger seat. He wishes like hell he’d never brought his pup along for the stakeout. These fuckin’ bastards shooting at him with piss-poor aim, whoever they are, are going to pay for traumatizing his damn dog.

A heavy silence follows – the shooters must be reloading. That’s Jensen’s chance. Using the Sabre to block his body, he pulls up and fires five shots in rapid succession, transitioning quickly when he catches even a hint of movement from the other cars, eyes one step ahead of his trigger. His rapid fire pays off when he hears a man groaning in obvious pain, but that victory is short-lived. Before Jensen can process the shot being fired, a bullet catches Jensen’s left arm, tearing through the meat of his tricep and electrocuting every nerve in his body.

“Son of a bitch!” Jensen curses. His entire left side shuts down but he only needs one arm to shoot. He sprays the rest of his clip into the space between the Sabre and the other vehicles, hoping like hell these guys don’t know how lucky they got.

Someone shouts, “Just fuckin’ leave him!” before two doors slam and the other black vehicle starts moving, cutting its tires away from Jensen and the barrel of his Browning to head in the opposite direction. Jensen doesn’t know enough about Idle’s outlying countryside to know if there’s a road they’re gunnin’ for, or what.

Either way, he has no time to wonder. All that’s left on the scene is the Mustang belonging to the Idle Sheriff’s Department and, lying on the ground in front of it, a body crumpled in the rain-soaked mud.

Jensen grabs the radio with his right hand, setting his gun on the driver’s seat. Warm blood’s seepin’ through his shirt, runnin’ like syrup down his left arm.

“Cassidy!” he’s yelling before the static clears. “Call for an ambulance!”

 _“Who’s hurt?”_

Jensen looks again at the man folded over on the ground, legs twisted beneath him and khaki shirt mottled with blood. The man’s not so much breathing as _rattling_ there in the mud.

“I think it’s Sheriff Corbin.”

 _“I see your lights, stay put!”_

Jensen runs, weapon in his good hand, and drops to his knees beside the gasping man. Every breath rattles, blood in the man’s lungs and airway. He’s been shot twice that Jensen can tell, one bullet on either side of his sternum. His skin is pale where it’s not covered in blood, eyes glassy though there’s barely any light to reflect. This is beyond Jensen’s ability to help.

“Hey, Sheriff! Look at me.”

Corbin twists his head, only half in this world. Hard to imagine his eyes are really seein’ Jensen, but his bloody lips open.

“…Was supposed to get rid of the Ranger.” Corbin coughs and shudders unnaturally. “Told me to make sure he never came.” His words are broken, more painful than the burn fighting its way through Jensen’s body. “Couldn’t–”

“Don’t talk,” Jensen says. “There’s a bus on the way.”

“Couldn’t–”

Jensen knows Corbin’s gone before the last word passes his lips, light gone from the Sheriff’s eyes as death claims its prize.

  


Cassidy slaps the ambulance’s back door before it pulls away, red lights fading from Jensen’s vision.

“They’re taking the body right up to Hastings,” she says. “And for the record, you’re an idiot.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“It’s truer now.” Cassidy eyes the bandage wrapped around Jensen’s left arm over his jacket, rolling her eyes. “Refusing medical care…“

“It was just a graze.”

“Because you’re a doctor now, too.”

“’Cause it’s not the first bullet to make my acquaintance,” Jensen snarls, regretting the tone as soon as his arm throbs sickeningly. “I’ll be fine.”

The deputy gives up. Matthew Davis, the night officer, walks towards the Sabre where Jensen and Cassidy are standing, a grim look marring his features. Jensen hasn’t had much of a chance to work with the guy, but he’d hopped a ride out here in the ambulance, following Cassidy’s lead without question.

“I can’t believe it,” Davis says. “I thought Corbin just ran off somewhere. I never thought…” He trails off and looks at Cassidy. She shakes her head.

“Jensen, I’ve got your statement. Davis and I can handle the clean-up here. I called in some help from the Greeley station, they’ll be here anytime. Why don’t you go rest up that arm?”

It’s past midnight and Jensen’s been willing the pain to the back of his mind for a while now. Through Cassidy pulling up and seeing Corbin’s body, hard tears in her eyes for only a moment before she wiped them away. Jensen told her what the Sheriff said, confirmed suspicions that Corbin was playing both sides until Jensen showed up. They’d stared at one another, easier than looking at Corbin’s body, until the ambulance lumbered onto the scene and Davis jumped out to help the med techs.

Jensen’s ready to argue that he’s fine. He can work through a scratch, for God’s sake. It’s barely bleeding.

“Better yet,” Cassidy says before Jensen interrupts her, “why don’t you go and see Jared about your arm. He won’t mind being woken up for something like that.”

“I’m not gonna ruin the Doc’s sleep.”

She sighs. “Just take your dog and get out of here, will you?”

“Gonna be okay with just Davis?” Jensen tilts his head at the other officer who’s standing where Corbin had been laid out, contemplating whatever bloodstains are left in the mud.

“We’ll be fine. The Greeley volunteers’ll be here any minute.”

Mo doesn’t get up when Jensen sits behind the wheel; the pup’s been cowering since this whole mess started. Cassidy waves at Jensen through the windshield – luckily there are no bullet holes in the tempered glass to mar his view. The rest of the Sabre hadn’t fared as well. There are three holes in the driver’s side door and two more in the fender, but Jensen’s girl is drivable.

Beyond the pain, beyond the exhaustion, Jensen’s relieved to be pulling away from the scene. Nothing more for him to learn there, anyway. Sheriff Corbin wasn’t one of the good guys – no telling how long the racket in Idle would have kept up if Jensen hadn’t been sent in.

Though part of him’s dying to get back to his room, grab his bottle of Red Eye and pass out from the bullet wound, Jensen steers into town.

He puts the urge down to the throbbing on his left side; the pain’s like getting shot over and over again in slow motion. Seeing the Doc might not be a bad idea.

Jensen pulls around the corner and slams on the brakes. The Sabre protests with a horrendous screech that Jensen barely hears, too busy staring at the car parked out in front of the clinic with its black siding crunched in and distorted.

Bullet holes. Put there by _Jensen’s_ gun.

In the next second, two men come tearing out of the clinic, one stumbling on legs thicker than tree trunks and the other clutching tight to his revolver.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!”

The man with the gun sees the Sabre and stops directly beneath a streetlamp, popping off two quick and badly aimed shots before leaping into the car his buddy’s got running. Jensen can’t grab his pistol in time but he’s got something more valuable: the shooter’s face in perfect detail, lit up under the streetlight.

The car peels out, quickly lost in the obscuring darkness. Jensen’s got a lead foot and he’s ready to pursue, but for the second time that night, Jensen watches the bad guy drive away.

The clinic.

Jensen pulls into the lot, damn arm a hindrance when he tries to climb out of the Sabre. Mo jumps out at his heels, following Jensen all the way to Jared’s door.

“Back, Mo!” he hisses, drawing down and peering around through the glass. His mutt processes the scene faster than Jensen, pawing at the clinic door and whimpering.

The door’s unlocked. Jensen pushes it open slowly, heart in his throat.

“Doc?”

Slouched against the wall, Jared’s folded up with his knees pulled to his chest, blank eyes forward on the neutral paint.

“Doc, you okay?”

“Stop calling me Doc.” The familiar line comes in a brittle tone, but that it comes at all has Jensen breathing a little easier.

Mo slips around Jensen’s legs when he turns to lock the door, trotting on his too-big paws over to Jared. Makes something sting in Jensen, and it ain’t his arm, to see Jared gently hold his hand out to the mutt. Abuse has made Mo shy, trusting only Jensen ‘til now. He’s happy for his pup and Jared’s eyes lose some of their emptiness.

Jared glances up, fingers scratching behind Mo’s floppy ears. His angular face is deeply set in shadow. “I heard shooting and I thought they were trying to get me through the – shit! Your arm.”

Jensen waves off the concern. “Just a graze, it’ll keep. What happened?”

Pushing up onto his feet, Mo leaning against his calves, Jared shakes his head.

“I was asleep when I heard the intercom, then someone knocking on the door to my apartment, yelling that it was an emergency. I threw on some clothes, opened the door”– Jared stops, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, hiding tremors Jensen would never blame him for – “and the next thing I know, there’s a gun in my face and this guy is threatening me.”

There’s barely any light in the waiting room, the only glow coming from an exam room down the hall. Jared turns, deep exhale poured out in uneven bursts.

“I tried to ask what was happening, and I saw the blood on the second guy’s shoulder, but I couldn’t… And then the guy with the gun – I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough for him.”

“Jared.”

The Doc turns, and Jensen rethinks getting back in the Sabre and running these bastards down. What he’d figured was just a shadow on Jared’s face is an extensive bruise, violently marred skin running from Jared’s cheek up to his temple.

“What the hell? Tell me what happened.” Jensen gets too close and Jared flinches. “Did the guy hit you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jensen demands in his steadiest voice. “You didn’t have that bruise this morning.”

“It was his gun.”

“What?”

“He hit me with his gun. Hard.” Jared coughs to cover his wry laugh, leaning away when Jensen instinctively reaches out. “A lot of good it did him. I couldn’t see straight for a minute, thought I was gonna fall over, and that wasn’t gonna help the guy with him.”

“Let’s get something on that.”

“It’ll keep.” Jared throws Jensen’s words right back. “Bullets trump bruises, okay?”

It’s not okay, but Jensen lets the argument leave him. Just so happens he’s in the mood to let the Doc have his way – his questions can wait.

“Something happened tonight, right?” Jared asks, leading Jensen into a different exam room, flipping on the light. The contusion on his face is sharper, swollen and already discolored. Steel versus skin ain’t a fair fight. “This is the second bullet wound I’ve had to treat tonight, so what was it?”

“There was an incident up on route 45.”

“You call a shoot-out just an incident?” Jared scoffs. He carefully unwinds the bloody bandage from around Jensen’s arm, dropping it in a marked container off to the side. “Take off your jacket.”

Jensen glares but Jared must be immune. When Jared turns away to grab gloves, Jensen shares a goofy look with Mo who’s curled up at Jensen’s feet. The Doc pulls a stool out for Jensen to sit on, holding gauze in his left hand, and examines the wound through Jensen’s shirt.

“Can you take this off too, or should I cut the sleeve?”

“It’s ruined anyway,” Jensen says. “Just cut it.”

“I’m guessing the bullet in that other guy came from your gun,” Jared comments after a few minutes spent cleaning Jensen’s wound with iodine antiseptic, the rust-colored liquid smeared all around his upper arm.

“You guessed right. How bad was it?”

“Bad.” Jared lets the iodine sit, holding gauze over the graze with significant pressure. “You hit his shoulder and practically obliterated his clavicle.”

Jensen couldn’t care less if Jared sees his satisfied smirk. “You able to fix all that?”

“Not with what I have here. I cleaned what I could, injected some pain medication around the wound since the guy wouldn’t shut up,” Jared says in a clinical tone that covers the tremor in his voice. “I taped it, told him he needed to get to a hospital before he lost any more blood, and then they just tore up out of here. Maybe they heard your car.” He grabs Jensen’s hand and places it over the gauze. “Hold this, keep pressure on it. You might need a few stitches, but there’s no major damage. You were lucky, Ranger.”

“Lucky would have been not getting hit at all,” Jensen complains with a grin. “You don’t have to call me Ranger.”

“You don’t have to call me Doc.”

The moment hangs in the air between them, easily going one way or another.

“Alright, Jared.” Jensen decides to give the guy a shot. “Truce?”

“Truce, Jensen.”

Tonight’s hardly the first time Jensen’s had someone stitchin’ him up, but he admits Jared’s got a decent bedside manner. The pain’s minimal though the Doc offers him an injectable analgesic anyway. Jensen refuses.

“Stop being stubborn. No one likes being in pain,“ Jared tries.

“I could introduce you to some very discreet women down in New Orleans who’d show you otherwise.”

“Alright,” Jared laughs, pulling the fine black thread through Jensen’s skin. “Enough.”

Jared’s stitches are precise, careful, and he distracts Jensen every time he needs to insert the curved needle. Jensen fills him in on the basic details of the shooting and its aftermath, delivering the news about Sheriff Corbin in a low voice.

“Are they bringing him here?” Jared whispers the question, cutting the slack off Jensen’s final stitch.

“No, they’re taking his body right up to Hastings.”

“Good. I don’t think I want to do an autopsy on anyone else I know.”

“I’m sorry you had to do it for Hicks,” Jensen offers. “Couldn’t have been easy.”

“I was just doing what I needed to.” Jared’s gloves come off with a snap. He replaces them with a fresh pair, swabbing an opaque jelly over the stitches. “This is just a topical pain reliever, nothing too heavy.”

As soon as Jared’s finished wrapping a fresh bandage around his arm, Jensen rounds on the Doc. “Alright, your turn.”

“I told you,” Jared argues, “I’m fine.”

“Sit down, Doc.”

Jared scowls, brow heavy. “I thought we talked about the Doc thing.”

“I’m reconsidering given how ornery you’re being about this.” Jensen changes tactics. “C’mon, let me live out my doctor-patient fantasy, here.”

“Do I want to know what your fantasy entails?”

“Only if you swing that way.”

Jared’s eyebrow goes up, scrunching his forehead even further, and points out which drawer contains the cooling antiseptic gel. While Jensen gathers supplies, Jared forgoes the stool and collapses in the exam chair. Sensing there’s been a change in patients, Mo yawns and crawls over to Jared, dozing right back off with his head on Jared’s foot.

Jensen’s temper flares all over again seeing the damage to the Doc’s face. The swelling’s made his face uneven, puffy skin around his left eye tender to the touch. Jensen hasn’t seen many men pistol-whipped, but he can tell the Doc’s gonna have a nasty shiner in a day or two, hard lines of the gun blooming across his cheek.

Jensen’s pissed. Beyond pissed, actually – he’s enraged on Jared’s behalf, but he wills the shaking out of his hands. If fate had sung her song a little differently tonight, Corbin might not have been the only body he’d have to deal with.

“Don’t put yourself in that position again,” he tells Jared. “Just give ‘em what they ask for. Arguing ain’t worth it.”

Jensen swabs the antiseptic on Jared’s cheekbone with his right hand, imagining he can feel the heat given off by the contused skin. Jared stares at Jensen with his jaw clenched, something intense hiding behind his eyes. Jensen scoffs to break the Doc’s gaze.

“Hell, if it was me and no one was holdin’ a gun to my head, I’d just let the guy suffer ‘til he died.”

“Ever heard of the Hippocratic oath?” Jared hisses, ducking away from Jensen’s hand. “Do no harm?” He sighs and adds, “I didn’t argue anyway. I was gonna help the guy, but I just…hesitated.”

“Rangers have an oath, too,” Jensen says, ignoring the throbbing in his arm to pin Jared in the chair.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Don’t let dumb fuckin’ doctors get beat on.”

“God, you’re a son of a bitch,” Jared curses, but allows Jensen to touch his face again, even leaning into the unpracticed touch, as Jensen sweeps a cotton pad across the mottled puce and violet skin.

Jensen likes the way Jared curses, the words impulsive and pithy. No sense feeling insulted, though. “I’ve been told that a few times.”

“Shocking.” Jared leans away from Jensen’s hand to check his reflection in the glass cabinet door. “You know, I can do this to myself.”

“Impressive, Doc. Finer education teaches you all sorts of things.”

The banter fades as the weight of the night’s events sits heavily on their shoulders. Mo’s breathing is the loudest thing in the room besides Jensen’s heartbeat to his own ears, adrenaline crash hitting him full force.

“Do you need some sort of statement from me?” Jared asks.

“Nothing that can’t wait ‘til the morning.”

Hell, Jensen’s eager to put this puzzle together and get after the bastards who’d wreaked so much destruction in Idle, but tonight’s a lost cause. The Doc’s tired, no missing that, and Jensen’s bushwhacked, ready for a bottle and oblivion.

“Why don’t you come by the station in the morning and we’ll talk,” Jensen suggests. “Rest’ll do us both good, I think.”

“Are you gonna be okay tonight?” Jared absentmindedly continues to pet Mo who sleepily soaks up the attention.

“You offerin’ to make a house call?” The joke comes on instinct. Jensen’s not ready to delve into anything serious after all that’s happened. Jared’s green eyes are wide, his lips parted, and Jensen says, “I’ll be good.” With his right hand, he pulls a card out of his wallet. “Lock up good n’ tight. Don’t come to the door for anyone unless it’s me or Cassidy.”

Jensen takes it as a sign of Jared’s exhaustion when he doesn’t put up a fuss at Jensen’s concern. “You know the motel’s number, right? I’m in room fourteen if anyone comes back tonight. Call straight away, okay?”

Jared nods when he takes the card. “If your arm hurts worse than you can deal with, swing back by here and I’ll give you something. I don’t care what time it is.”

Mo nips half-heartedly at Jensen’s hand when he tries to get the pup out of Jared’s exam room.

“I know, buddy. Been a long night…”

Jared’s smile is soft when Jensen turns around.

“He seems like a great dog,” Jared says, turning off the lights and walking out of the clinic with Jensen. “It must be nice to have him around when you’re traveling.”

“He eats too much, drools, and snores all the damn time,” Jensen tells him, feeling Mo bump against his knees. “Other’n that, I’m not complaining.”

On that lighter note, the night finally ends. Jensen hangs around, right hand steady on his holster, until Jared locks the clinic and is safely behind the door leading up to the apartment. He senses eyes on him as he’s getting back in the Sabre, Mo curling up right next to Jensen on the seat, and knows it’s Jared.

It’s a full minute before Jensen drives away.

Jensen’s not in the business of lying. He meant it when he told the Doc he’d be okay, though he’d seen the doubt on the man’s face. On the drive to the motel, Jensen has to keep tellin’ himself it was true.

The shooting hadn’t shaken him much; in this line of work, Jensen’s gotten used to standing between a bullet and a target. It’s not the first time he’s been hit, and it ain’t pessimism to say that it won’t be the last time either. Truth is, sitting alone with Corbin’s body had been much worse than the pain. Knowing there was no life behind those eyes and that Corbin’s soul was long gone had rattled Jensen badly. But the Doc’s company had eased part of that lonely ache, though he was smart enough to keep that notion to himself.

When Jensen gets back to his room, he thinks about drinking. He thinks about it some more as he’s yankin’ off his boots and feels a leftover sting of pain down his left side. There’s a full bottle of whiskey looking welcoming on the nightstand. Without painkillers in his system, a finger or two wouldn’t do any harm, but he leaves the bottle capped. Mo’s belly-up on the end of the bed sleeping off whatever trauma the shooting had caused.

Jensen chases sleep for an hour but his heart’s beating too loud in his ears. He gets up and pulls a pad of paper and a pen out of the nightstand drawer, jotting down everything he remembers from the two shoot-outs. He writes ‘til his eyes start drooping and his blood’s not pumping so hard through his veins. While he’s still conscious, he sketches out the face he’d recognized outside of the clinic – the man who’d shot at him. The same man had answered the door at one of the outlying farms Jensen scouted, claiming to live alone and be in the middle of selling the property and oh, was Jensen interested in buying?

Bullshit, all of it. The man had triggered Jensen’s suspicions then, but with nothing else to go on, he’d left.

But Jensen’s got the man’s face in his sights. Give him a few hours to sleep and he’ll be back on the case, and this time he’ll be aiming to end it.

  


Davis is asleep behind the station’s front desk. Arms folded under his head, cheek mashed against his wristwatch. It’d be funny if it weren’t so damn inappropriate.

Jensen leans his hip on the desk and stares down, trying not to laugh. He’s regained a handle on his nerves and impulses, a few hours of sleep enough to recharge his mind; his body’s lagging a few steps behind.

He kicks the metal side of the desk, percussive clatter enough to send Davis into a flailing fit, pushing back so fast that he nearly topples over in his chair.

“Mornin’, Davis.”

The officer glances up, glares with blurry eyes. “It’s morning?” His words are broken up by a long yawn. “Good, that means I can go home.”

“Not just yet.”

Cassidy’s voice joins the conversation. Drawn by the racket Jensen and Davis are making, she steps out of her office and pins Davis in his chair. He groans and she adds, “The Ranger’s here to bring us up to speed on what he knows.”

“How long’s that gonna take?” Davis asks, rubbing his straight jaw with long fingers.

Cassidy grins. “As long as it takes.”

“Can I at least run out for coffee first?”

“What’s wrong with the pot I made in the back?” Cassidy asks. Davis pulls a bitter face and she concedes. “Fine, grab enough for four. I think Jared’s going to be joining us.”

Davis is thrilled to have an excuse to get out from under Jensen’s nose. Jensen hasn’t moved yet, hip cocked on the desk, watching Cassidy’s show with a grin.

“Long night?” he asks.

The deputy nods, cheeks stretched and mouth tight as she fights off her own yawn. “After Matt and I finished up at the scene, he drove the Sheriff’s car to the garage we have in the back. I made him stick around here just in case anything else happened, but it’s been quiet.” She eyes Jensen up and down, stopping on his left arm where the bandage creates a bulge under his shirt. “You doing alright?”

“The Doc patched me up last night,” Jensen explains, mum on the details. He’ll give Jared the chance to say his piece on it. “Aches a bit, but I’ll manage.”

They move into a small conference room, Cassidy’s files already cluttering one end of the table. She closes the blinds on the two windows that look into the main office; Jensen figures it for a nervous habit. Besides the Doc, he doesn’t expect anyone to walk in and crash the meeting since he knows Cassidy’s been giving her administrative staff time off.

While Jensen and Cassidy are alone, he asks, “You trust Davis enough to bring him in on this?”

Her blue eyes harden but she nods. “Matt’s a true Idle boy. He grew up here and made good on his potential when most of his buddies took up farming or left for better work. He’s loyal to the job – never wanted anything more than to be a cop.”

“Boy just seems a little…” Jensen twirls his finger around his ear.

“Show me a small towner who’s not a little crazy,” Cassidy counters.

Davis walks in as her laugh dies down, balancing a cardboard tray with four Styrofoam cups and leading Jared into the conference room. The second Cassidy gets a look at the Doc’s face, she’s across the room and up on her toes, turning Jared’s cheek to see the damage.

The swelling’s gone down since last night, the Doc must’ve kept an ice pack on it, but the sickening colors stand out vividly in daylight.

Jared gently holds Cassidy away, voice equally soft. “I’m fine, Paula.”

The look in their eyes reads like they know each other well. Knowledge born of living in a small town, in and out of each other’s business constantly. Jensen feels a pang in his gut.

“Paula?” He breaks the tense moment. “So Cassidy _is_ your last name.” He knew it from the reports he’d received, but this is the first time he’s heard anyone use it.

Cassidy hits Jensen with a withering stare like it’d been his gun leaving the marks on the Doc. “What the hell happened last night?”

As reinforcement that Jensen’s the one holding the reins, Jared looks to him before taking a seat at the table. The only support Jensen can give him is eye-contact, gaze steady as Jared shares how the gunman had dragged him from his apartment, forcing him into the clinic to treat his wounded associate.

“The guy I treated,” Jared adds. “He needed more medical help than I could give him in the time he was there. If he didn’t get to the hospital, he could be pretty bad right now.”

Jensen wishes he could be honest and tell the group to fuck any thoughts of getting that bastard help. He remembers being open with Jared last night, but two extra pairs of eyes keep him from making an outburst. Jared’s brow is furrowed when he glances in Jensen’s direction, no sympathy in his eyes. Despite whatever oath binds Jared to his career, the Doc’s thinkin’ along those same lines. Jensen grins; he’s a horrible influence.

“Did you recognize either of the men?” Jensen asks.

Jared closes his eyes, remembering. “I thought I recognized the one who…” He touches his cheek. “He’s never been a patient, but maybe I saw him around town or something?”

Jensen pictures the ugly mug he’d seen under the streetlight: a gaunt face on top of a short neck, dark mustache under a sharply curved nose and narrow-set eyes.

“I got a good look when they ran out of the clinic,” Jensen says. “The one who pulled on me, probably the bastard who grazed me, looked like a guy I came across when I was checking out properties west of town the other day.”

“Are you sure?”

Jensen nods at Davis. “Sure enough to warrant another visit out there.”

“What would we be getting ourselves into?” Cassidy asks. “You said you had an idea of what we’re dealing with, right?”

“I’ve seen it before.” Jensen pauses to take a long swig of his coffee. This bitter roast goes down smooth, much better than the sludge from the diner. He licks his lips and catches Jared looking away. “Idle’s probably a stop on the supply line for some Californian cartel. The stops change all the time to throw off the authorities. Most runs are only in place for a single shipment to pass through. You’re out of the way up here, but you’ve got good roads, plenty of land, and enough people living here that a few extras ain’t gonna stick out too much.”

“Drugs?” Jared shakes his head, hair falling over his eyes.

“Suppliers. A few of them might spend their cut buying a little of what they’re moving, turning around and selling it off to locals for three or four times what they’re paying. Or, they’re stealin’ it outta what they’re supposed to be movin’. Either way, that’ll kick-start a chain of bad news for Idle,” Jensen adds. “I bet y’all were seeing the effects long before I got here.”

He lets that sink in.

“Idle’s part of the conduit, but the ones running the operation here are gonna be pretty far down on the food chain. Low level thugs charged only with keepin’ the supply going, not makin’ any big moves. Hell, they’d probably be eliminated as soon as the runs were done anyway.” Jensen smiles. “Less people for the cartel to pay.”

Cassidy is stoic. “How many people are we talking about?”

“If we’re lucky, less than ten.”

She nods. Davis doesn’t seem to be doing much thinking at all, eyes focused on something the rest of them can’t see.

“There were three guys handling the Sheriff last night–”

“Corbin,” Cassidy cuts in. “I still don’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” Jared speaks up. “When he asked me to do the autopsy here, I thought it was weird, but I never imagined he’d be working with these drug suppliers.”

“The autopsy being kept local was one clue,” Jensen says. “He also lied about where Gabe Hicks’ body was found, remember? Hell, he could have seen Gabe get shot and the body was never dumped.”

The Doc presses his lips together, guilt heavy on his brow.

“I think Corbin was in over his head,” Jensen says to distract everyone. “Whoever’s runnin’ this operation probably told him to make sure I didn’t show up, but when he couldn’t stop it–”

“That’s when he disappeared,” Davis answers for him, alert for the moment.

“Fits, doesn’t it?” Jensen drains the last dregs of coffee and envies Jared his full cup. “It takes at least half a dozen men to work a ring like this. They probably hired some locals, like Gabe and the other two you’ve got missing, to do odd jobs. Stuff around town that’d raise too many questions if it were a stranger.”

Cassidy swears, fingers tapping on the conference table. “I don’t want anyone else we know getting wrapped up in all this.”

“If folks you know are helping these bastards out, it might be a good thing.”

“What do you mean?”

Jensen turns back to Jared. “If they know you, they’re not gonna want to harm anyone. Locals are easy to talk out of doing something stupid. Just gotta remind ‘em of the consequences if they choose to go against us.”

“You make it sound easy,” Jared says.

“Like I said, this ain’t the first drug ring I’ve broken up.” He shoots the Doc a confident smile, hopin’ to smooth out those lines across his forehead. “And if these guys had any sense, they’d have stuck around to take me out last night. They knew I hadn’t followed them to the clinic, so they must’ve figured I was injured somehow. Could’ve ended it right there.”

“I’m glad they didn’t.”

Davis is halfway back to sleep. Drug dealers and plans of attack must not be enough to keep the officer on this side of dreamland. Cassidy’s pointedly looking down at her files. Jensen and the Doc might as well be the only ones in the room.

“Would’ve ruined our night, huh?”

Jared ducks his chin, pulling his eyes away. Jensen’s only got a second to find that interesting before Cassidy starts brainstorming a plan and the meeting’s back to being all business.

Whatever he’d seen in Jared’s stare is gone the next time their eyes meet.

  


“No shit. Corbin was dirty?”

“Or caught up in something he just couldn’t handle. If his back was against the wall–”

“No sense speculating,” JD tells him over the line. “Corbin’s out of the picture. Got a plan to wrap this up? McKellip’s been breathing down my neck, calling every day to see if you’ve made any progress. I’ll be glad when the Idle job’s finished and I can get rid of him.”

“Better he’s calling you than me.” Jensen’s not fond of thinking about the politician; McKellip’s interest in this town continues to not make a lick of sense.

“I’m sure he knows that,” his captain says. “Now, tell me how you’re gonna shut this down.”

“Cassidy pulled info on the farm they’re based out of.” Jensen paces in the narrow space between his motel bed and the wall, radiator clanking in the background. Mo’s up on the bed, panting happily while he watches Jensen go back and forth. “It was foreclosed on, but someone paid cash for it ‘bout five months ago. Cassidy had one of her men watchin’ the place yesterday.”

“I’m guessing he saw something?”

“A few cars coming ‘n going, but two of them matched the vehicles I saw the night of the shoot-out.”

“No shit,” JD repeats. “Not the smartest drug dealers you’ve ever been up against, huh?”

“I was thinkin’ along those lines,” Jensen says. Fed up with watching Jensen, Mo rests his head on his front paws. If a dog could project emotion, Mo would be telling Jensen that he’s beyond bored. “Cassidy’s still got those volunteers on call from Greeley, so we’ve got enough manpower to take down the operation. We’ll hit ‘em during the day since they seem most active at night.”

“Well, you’ve got the go-ahead from my end,” Morgan tells him, injecting unnecessary gravitas into his already rough voice. Jensen already knew he’d have the support. “Whatever you need to do, Jensen. Just make sure whatever drugs and money you find are kept in Ranger custody. We don’t need some radical or backwoods crazy thinking they can get to it and start their own little operation.”

“Will do.” Jensen doesn’t comment on the fact that the money and the drugs would provide a nice boost for the Rangers’ operating budget. Ain’t his place to change business. “Thanks, Captain.”

“You go get ‘em.”

  


The plan’s set for tomorrow, a showdown at high-noon.

Jensen leans back in his booth and tries not to think about the bust. He isn’t worried and there are plenty of distractions in this bar. Three local honeys are flaunting their ample assets in front of the bartender, angling for free drinks from him or any of the callused farmhands takin’ refuge in cold beer and the sports channel. A game of pool across the room could turn ugly at any minute – two men in clashing flannel shirts trading angry looks over the green felt top – and the Doc’s standing a few feet away from Jensen’s table, clearly waitin’ for an invitation.

“Can’t eat alone in this town, huh?”

Jared disarms him with a simple smile, previously unnoticed dimples outlining his mouth. “We just like company. Can I join you or are you working?”

“Seat’s yours.” Jensen pushes the sleeves of his henley up to his elbows. “I’m always on the job, but I could use the diversion.”

“I guess Rangers don’t have a dress code,” Jared says, grin still lighting up the dim corner they’re in.

“Think I’d do my job better in a fancy suit?”

As soon as Jensen says it, Jared’s eyes wander south, down from the henley’s unbuttoned collar, across the stone gray fabric and ending on the badge clipped to Jensen’s belt.

“Could be worth a shot.” Jared shrugs.

“Maybe.” Jensen folds his arms on the table. “What brings you here?”

“Charlie”– he points to the bartender– “brews the best sweet tea. I never drank the stuff before I moved here, but I’m addicted to all the sugar he puts in.” Jared stops and laughs when Jensen raises his eyebrow. “Yeah, and I saw your car in the lot too.”

“Fancy that,” Jensen remarks. “You eating?”

Jensen had polished off his hot wings not too long ago, catching every last drop of the chunky bleu cheese dressing with haphazardly cut celery sticks, but he’s willing to stick around a little while longer.

“I’m not too hungry,” Jared says. He catches Charlie’s eye and waves, and the bartender sets a large glass of amber liquid on the bar-top a second later. Jared steps away from the table, already sipping on his tea by the time he comes back. “And no offense to Charlie, but there are better places to eat around here.” He sighs. “I can’t seem to stop thinking about everything that’s happened. I thought I’d be living a quiet life and yet here I am, in the middle of all this.”

“It’s not happening because of you.”

“I know, but…” Jared grimaces, draws Jensen’s gaze up to the bruise marring a good portion of his face. “Kind of feels like I can’t get away from it, you know?”

“But you’re here, talking to me,” Jensen points out. “Can’t get much more involved than I am. If you don’t wanna think about it, probably best to stay away from me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Jensen laughs. “Didn’t think so.”

He likes that he has Jared smiling. The Doc’s been dragged through enough shit thanks to this job; Jensen oughta be shielding him from taking any more hits, but that’s not always the way things work out.

Jensen’s server, a little blonde thing in denim shorts, sets a box on the table with his check tucked in the lid.

“Two medium burgers, no bun and no condiments. “ She spots the Doc. “Hey, Jared. How are you?”

“Good, Zita. Thanks.” Jared’s all manners and polite gestures; it gets Jensen a little hot under the collar. “Busy night?”

“Not too bad. I see you’ve got tea, do you want anything else?”

“No thanks, I’m gonna take off soon.”

“Suit yourself,” she says, swinging her narrow hips around and walking away.

Jared nods at the to-go box. “Late night cravings?”

“Mo’s dinner,” he says. “I feel bad when I have to leave him in the motel room all day. I bring him real food so he won’t resent me.”

“How’d you end up with him?” Jared asks as Zita passes by and grabs Jensen’s cash, dropping a quick thanks before she’s off to another table.

“Picked him up a couple of jobs ago,” Jensen says. “It wasn’t a pretty sight. Some hick up along the Northern border thought dog meat would be a boomin’ business.”

“I hope you put him down,” Jared responds, venom on his tongue.

Jensen makes a fist and flexes it. “Bastard probably hasn’t graduated to solid foods yet.” He watches Jared slip a few bucks under his empty glass and says, “You goin’ somewhere?”

Jared looks right at him. “I thought we might take this conversation somewhere private now that you’re done.”

No mistaking that tone, honeyed and thick with intention. Jensen feels the warmth of it settling in his blood.

“Gotta bring Mo his dinner.”

Jared grins. “Your room works.”

  


Jared pulls his car in next to the Sabre. Jensen’s waiting, room key in hand, as the Doc hops out and wipes his palms on his jeans.

Jensen looks his fill the way Jared had back at Charlie’s. He likes the stretch of denim spanning Jared’s hips, color faded from years of good wear; he bets the fabric’s soft to the touch. Jared’s got an open collared shirt draped over his customary tee, brick red and tan over black. Jensen’s already come to appreciate the Doc’s shoulders, wide and capable – he looks like a man you’d want backin’ you up in a brawl – but Jared’s expressions are gentler. A man you know can fight, but chooses not to.

Jensen’s hoping he can bring at least a little of that fire out tonight.

“Are we talking out here?” Jared asks, shifting his weight on the concrete walk.

Jensen grins and unlocks the door.

Mo’s on them instantly, nose eager to catch every new smell they’re bringing in. Jared sets his keys and wallet on the table and starts scratching behind Mo’s ears. Mo melts right into the attention until he gets a whiff of the burgers and starts snapping at Jensen’s hands.

“Damn puppy teeth. Still sharp,” he laughs, letting his mutt eat right out of the container.

Mo’s slobbering doesn’t exactly set the right mood, Jensen imagines.

Outside, two tractor trailers rumble past on the highway and shake the faded pictures on the motel room’s wall.

“Nice ambience in this place,” Jared teases.

“You gotta pay extra for that.”

Jensen follows routine, unclipping his holster and setting it on the nightstand. There’s a loaded twenty-two under his pillow as well – he’s wise enough to remove it when the maid comes around. His badge goes right next to the holster, a Ranger’s Silver Star reflecting the low wattage of the bedside lamp.

He turns to Jared. “So, you wanted to talk?”

As soon as the words are out, Jared’s across the room slamming into Jensen’s space. He doesn’t spare Jensen a single breath before their mouths are opening together, tumblers of a lock sliding into place the same way Jared’s tongue slips right past Jensen’s lips.

Hell _yes_.

Jensen ain’t got the time, or the will, to second guess what they’re doing. He wants the Doc laid bare right next to him, bodies touching from chest to ankle, fucking in bursts of hard and sweet, but he’ll take this first and enjoy the hell out of it. He ravages Jared’s mouth and is turned out in kind, eyes closed because it makes the sensations coming from his lips that much better, the same way hearing Jared moan sets his body on fire.

Jared’s jeans are as soft as they looked. Jensen hooks his fingers in the beltloops, tugging Jared’s hips against his.

“I like this kinda talking,” he growls through his teeth, mouth lowered to the cut of Jared’s jaw.

“From the way you were looking at me, I thought you might,” Jared says, slotting his knee between Jensen’s legs and nudging him backwards.

Jensen becomes aware of the press of the bed behind his knees, heartbeat stepping up its rhythm.

“This is better than anything I had planned for tonight.”

Jared pulls at the back of Jensen’s neck, tugging Jensen’s mouth up to his. The Doc is strength and want all wrapped up in a deadly package that Jensen can’t wait to put through its paces.

“That so?”

“Night before a big bust, I’m usually–”

“Wait…”

All those good feelings suddenly halt in their tracks. Jensen groans. “What now?”

“The bust is happening tomorrow?” Jared’s still up in Jensen’s space which is damn frustrating. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“’Cause I never heard you ask,” Jensen says. “What’s it matter?”

Jared looks sidelong at Mo. Jensen’s mutt is watching them, eyes round and interest piqued like he and Jared are puttin’ on a show.

“When are you–”

“About noon.” Jensen’s voice is quickly gaining an edge. “Still not seein’ where this matters.”

Jared steps back, Jensen’s fingers holding on ‘til they can’t anymore. He feels like a kid, and the toy he wants is suddenly on the other side of a glass window.

“I should let you rest or something.”

“I don’t need to _rest_ ,” Jensen says. “And I don’t want to think about the bust either. I’m not gonna sit here ponderin’ the details if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Whatever Jensen’s saying isn’t doing a damn thing to get Jared back in his arms. The Doc’s totally out of reach and lookin’ like he plans to stay that way.

“Seriously, I should go.”

Before Jensen has the sense to argue otherwise, Jared picks up his wallet and keys and backs to the door. His expression is sending mixed messages: lips kiss swollen and bitten dark, a flush making his face look all kinds of sinful, but his eyes are wary, too cautious for Jensen to think he’s got any kind of hope of turning things around.

“Good luck tomorrow,” Jared says.

“Hang on!” Jensen gets to the door as it opens and hooks Jared’s elbow. The Doc doesn’t fight but he turns back, too many feelings in his eyes for Jensen to get a handle on. Jensen puts himself way out on that proverbial limb.

“Look, Jared. I won’t make you stay, but I wanted you here tonight if it makes any difference.”

“It does,” Jared says, leaning in for another kiss that Jensen happily surrenders to. “But I’m not staying. Tomorrow, after the bust, will you stop by my office?”

“You think I’m gonna need to be patched up again?”

“I hope not,” Jared says lightly. “That might make what I’ve got planned a little less entertaining.”

“Hell.” Jensen takes a deep breath. “I take back what I said about not making you stay.”

Jared’s eyes make a slow trip down below Jensen’s belt, and he smirks. “Good luck, Ranger,” he repeats, loosely pulling away from Jensen’s hold. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mo whines when the door shuts. Jensen looks over and scowls. “Tell me about it.”

 

  
**  
PART THREE   
**   


  


  


Lieutenant Mac Toledo of the Greeley police department is all business. Jensen had bonded with the man when Cassidy had introduced them the day before. The group is stationed a mile out from the drug dealers’ base; the Lieutenant and his two officers listen along with Davis as Cassidy and Jensen recite the plan.

“We’re goin’ in quiet, on foot,” Jensen says. “They might be expectin’ a raid after the shoot-out a few nights ago, but we’ve been keepin’ an eye on the roads in and out and they haven’t bothered to up their manpower.”

“There’s a possibility that our two missing persons are in the compound somewhere,” Cassidy adds, handing printed photos around. “We don’t know if they’re hostages or accomplices. If they’re accomplices, hopefully they’ll be smart enough to surrender right off the bat.”

Wishful thinking, Jensen knows.

“Everyone in there should be considered armed and dangerous,” Jensen says. “They’re not shy about leavin’ bodies, we know that.”

“So watch your back and stay in contact,” Toledo finishes for the group.

As a last, sobering note, Cassidy adds, “Med techs and transports will be standing by, waiting for our call.”

Jensen’s off in his own world while everyone gears up. They’ll come at the farm from the back road, runnin’ with silent sirens to give them an edge. He’s been over the plan so many times, he’s sick of thinking. Mo’s safe in the motel room, but Jensen had spent an extra five minutes giving his pup a belly rub this morning.

Just in case.

He’s out of sorts today, too big for his body. While he can, he entertains thoughts of Jared to give himself a distraction, letting the impending action disappear for a few minutes before they roll out and get into all sorts of trouble.

Without meaning to, the Doc’s got Jensen tied up in knots. On the road so much, he’s used to wantin’ and gettin’ at the same time. No one walks through his door without both of them being good ‘n satisfied. Waiting’s a new game and Jensen’s not sold on it. He definitely isn’t wise to the rules.

Whatever Jared’s got planned better be damned good, that’s for sure.

Cassidy comes over and taps his shoulder, gettin’ him back in the moment.

“Ready?”

Jensen checks his holster and clips one last time and says, “Always.”

  


Pure luck brings Jensen to within ten feet of the weathered farmhouse before he’s spotted.

The other five lawmen are spread out, circling in on the house after they’d quietly cleared the half-dozen outbuildings. Their vehicles are stashed a quarter-mile back on the road, masking their approach. Everything’s going like clock-work until Jensen comes up on the backside of the farmhouse.

He’s caught by surprise when a dark haired, bearded man rounds the corner. His big, gnarled hands are workin’ at his fly; he’s probably a look-out sneaking away from his post to take a leak. The man’s face goes white, nearly pissing himself right there at the sight of the Ranger staring him down with a gun in hand, but he recovers quickly when he sees Jensen’s badge. The man tenses, gets a swing off before Jensen can bring his gun up between them, and his fist rains down in an arc, nailing Jensen hard on the side of his face. Jensen’s gun falls to the grass, out of reach.

The strike lights Jensen up like a storm electrifying the plains. The look-out goes to open his mouth – a warning yell – but Jensen drives his shoulders into the man’s chest and knocks the wind straight outta him. Bitten-down fingernails claw to get a grip on Jensen’s face and neck, digging like a dull, serrated blade as the man tries to fight him off.

Jensen loses his advantage and is roughly shoved away. Seeing his opening, the man throws an upper-cut that lands square on Jensen’s jaw. Jensen hits back, aims a chop right over the man’s carotid artery that stuns him for the second it takes for Jensen to fight outta the man’s grip.

The man comes at him hard as soon as Jensen goes for his gun. Blows land over Jensen’s ribs, choking his breath, but he counters with sharp jabs into the man’s kidneys, dropping him to his knees. A few more hits to the head and the man’s out cold, but Jensen’s face feels like an egg, cracked and scrambled.

Finding his gun in the grass, Jensen moves right along behind the house. No one comes running; Jensen hopes like hell the fight didn’t cause too much commotion.

A minute later, Jensen comes up on Davis grappling with a man who’s stick-thin but swinging his arms like a windmill and keeping Davis from taking him down. The man’s eyes are too bright, the drugs in his blood making him hard to fight off, and he’s so wound up he doesn’t hear Jensen approaching from behind. He’s afforded no warning when Jensen’s gun hits him in the neck and drops him like a lead weight.

“Man, I”– Davis gasps –“thanks, he was crazy.”

He tosses Davis a spare pair of handcuffs, nodding over his shoulder towards the man he’d already taken care of. “Get ‘em cuffed to something solid and try to keep ‘em quiet. Make sure they’re not going anywhere.”

Jensen creeps up onto the porch, going still when he catches movement behind the thin dirty sheets strung up like curtains. A glance around the landscape doesn’t reveal Cassidy, Toledo, or the other two officers unless they’re already inside.

The front door’s ajar, crooked as if it’s about to fall off the rusty hinges, and Jensen pushes it open, letting his gun lead the way into the room. There ain’t much to the place, furniture’s long been cleared out or sold off, and every footstep Jensen takes sends a plume of fine, gray dust up into the air. No one ever accused drug dealers of keepin’ a clean hideout.

A shadow disappears through a sagging doorway ahead on Jensen’s left. He follows silently into an empty kitchen where brown and green bottles are stacked up in the sink, cardboard boxes and Styrofoam cups littered on the black and white tile floor. On the far side of the kitchen, another door stands between Jensen and the low murmur of multiple voices.

He takes a deep breath, ignoring the dust that’s irritating his eyes and nose, and moves forward. The knob rattles in Jensen’s hand; he pulls back. The voices cut off and before Jensen can hustle backwards into the front room for cover, the door opens.

Five people are on the other side, four men and one woman. Two outta the five stunned faces match the grainy photos on Cassidy’s handout – seems they’re not _missing_ anymore.

The man standing in the open door is scrawny and the dim indoor light hits his bald head. He double-takes at the sight of Jensen. “Who the hell are you?”

Jensen suddenly finds himself starin’ down the barrels of three weapons. Not the worst he’s faced in his violent career, but his heart stops for a split second before the adrenaline kicks in. He considers pulling his trigger and escaping while the dealers worry about the bullets, but he wants to buy time for Cassidy and the others to find him.

Jensen vowed to end this here, today.

“I know him,” one of the men sneers. “He’s a damn cop!”

Jensen recognizes two of the three gunmen. One’s easily discernible from his hooked nose and thin, greasy mustache; that’s the bastard who’d grazed Jensen’s arm on the night Corbin was murdered and, unfortunately for him, pistol-whipped Jared. Jensen’s aching to make him pay for that. His accomplice from that night is obvious thanks to the thick, blood-soaked bandage wrapped tightly around the fat flesh of his right shoulder.

“Look who we have here.” Jensen’s lip curls. “How’s the shoulder, bubba? I got you good, didn’t I?”

Bubba’s pale face wobbles, gun wavering in the grip of his weak hand. His aim doesn’t worry Jensen a whole hell of a lot.

“I got a piece of you too, cop,” the hooked-nose man sneers. “Should’ve just finished you off back at the damn doctor’s.”

“Yup.” Jensen smiles; the bravado this guy’s throwing out makes no difference to him. “Probably should’ve.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hook says, “you’re all alone now.”

Jensen lines the center of the man’s forehead up in his sights. “You’re dumber than you look and that’s quite an accomplishment.”

“You think insultin’ me is gonna get you outta this?”

“It’s makin’ me feel a hell of a lot better.”

Hook’s eyes narrow. He opens his mouth to fire back but the far door in the room behind him is suddenly kicked open, wood busted straight off its hinges. Toledo storms into the room with his two officers backing him up, all three of their weapons raised.

“Weapons on the ground, now!” Toledo shouts.

“Boss?” The third gunman, a young guy from Idle, darts a nervous look towards the bald man who’s clearly not thrilled about being outted as the ringleader.

“Shut up!”

“So you’re the boss?” Jensen drawls. “Good to know.”

With four guns pointed at him, the gunman from Idle begins to lower his weapon. The young woman’s hands are already in the air. Light, booted steps approach Jensen from the back and out of the corner of his eye Jensen sees Cassidy come up next to him.

“What’re you gonna do, cop?” Hook taunts Jensen, the others looking on to see which way the battle’s gonna swing. Jensen’s already put this one in the win column so long as no one gets testy with their weapons. “You ain’t gonna shoot us without cause, I know the rules.”

“Oh no,” Jensen laughs. “This is a Texas Ranger operation, dipshit. Do you know what that means?”

Bubba shrugs; the bald leader and Hook share a look.

“Go on and tell them what that means, Ranger,” Toledo says, voice hard.

“We still got rights,” the bald man says, voice holding less water.

“Could be, but I am well within my rights to shoot you, considering you’re goin’ down for the murder of a town Sheriff and the attempted murder of a Ranger,” Jensen counters. “Really, I’m not too fond of paperwork and there’s a hell of a lot less for a dead man than a live one.” His voice goes hard. “So if you don’t put down your guns right now and kick ‘em this way? I will shoot and when I do, I be aiming to kill.”

Jensen imagines he could hear a pin drop in the sudden silence as the gunmen estimate their piss-poor chances and the lawmen tense up, ready for anything. No one moves and Jensen clenches his teeth, scowling. He pulls back on his trigger…

Three guns hit the floor, and Cassidy and Toledo move forward to take the dealers into custody.

“That’s what I thought,” Jensen hisses.

  


The ragged face in the mirror stares out at Jensen and asks what the hell he’s thinking. This is the face Jared’s gonna see later. Jensen’s never been one for self-flattery, but the picture ain’t pretty.

His eyelids are red, drier than they oughta be. The skin under his eyes is shadowed; the left is somehow darker than the right, making Jensen appear like an unbalanced shade of himself. His jaw sports scruff from the beard he thinks about but never commits to. At least he can shave that off, but one little change won’t do much for the rest of him.

Jensen’s got his work cut out, navigating the razor over tender skin, around his many hurts. The cuts and bruises are even more noticeable when his face is smooth, but what’s done is done.

He owns one suit jacket, a charcoal gray number Morgan made him buy for court. He’d balked, but at least the captain hadn’t forced him into buying the whole ensemble. Tonight he slips it on gingerly over the white t-shirt and black henley he’d changed into after taking Mo for a walk, trying not to pull too much on the bandage around his arm, and keeps the boots and jeans he was already wearing.

He clips the holster onto his belt but he leaves the badge in the nightstand drawer. Mo’s asleep when he leaves, full bowls of food and water to hold him over ‘til the morning.

The clinic is dark when Jensen pulls up outside. The parking lot’s empty except for the Sabre and Jared’s car. Jensen takes a long look around but the street’s quiet in both directions.

At the door, he holds down the intercom button he’d seen Cassidy use. “Jared?”

And a second later, the Doc’s distorted voice hisses through the speaker. “ _Hey, I closed the office a little while ago. I’ll buzz you up to the apartment, hang on…_ ”

Jensen climbs the narrow staircase once the lock disengages. There’s a door at the top, and Jensen knocks after taking a deep breath.

He’s imagining all kinds of ways tonight could go. Jensen wouldn’t blame the Doc if he slammed the door in his face on account of the beating he took. Might be enough to turn Jared around on his plans.

Lookin’ as rough as he does, Jensen’s expecting a lecture. He’s not too fond of gettin’ them, but if he has to endure a few words from the Doc in order to move to the more entertaining parts of the night, he might not mind so much.

Jensen definitely isn’t expecting Jared to answer the door and invite him in while wearing nothing but loose jeans that cling to his trim hips. Jared’s a big man, and that’s a hell of a lot of skin he’s showing off. The light hair dusted across Jared’s sternum makes Jensen’s mouth water for a taste of what he’s seeing.

“Am I early?”

Jared shakes his head. “Right on time, actually.”

“Really.” Jensen doesn’t make it a question. “Well, you’ve got my attention, Doc.”

“Good,” Jared says, letting the nickname slide for once. The door shuts and Jensen’s pinned in the entry. He’s not looking for a way out. “I was making sure last night wasn’t a fluke.”

“By gettin’ undressed before I got here?” Jensen follows the divots at Jared’s hips, then brings his eyes back and tilts his chin up. “I’m flattered, but I wish you’d saved the show.”

Jensen gets little warning before Jared’s kissing him – the Doc’s fond of surprises. Jared standing there half naked might’ve been a big clue this would happen, but Jensen’s not too keen on hindsight. Jared’s big paws wrap around Jensen’s face, holding him like there’s a chance he’ll run, and his forearms lean heavily on Jensen’s chest.

Jensen’s been remembering their last kiss all damn day, happy to add more details to flesh out the memory. Jared angles his head instinctively, pulling Jensen’s lips forward between his teeth if there’s even a hint of Jensen backing away.

Their lips hold each other's shape when they finally do allow some space between them.

Jared asks, “Are you coming in?” and Jensen’s left with no other urge than to follow.

The lecture never comes. Jared delivers a long look once they’re in the kitchen and his scrutiny has Jensen aching to scratch at the cuts scattered across his face. He raises a hand but Jared’s fingers are there to stop him.

“That’ll make it worse.”

Their eyes meet, Jensen silently asking the Doc to spare him any more concern. Without a word, he knows when Jared agrees to hold off.

“Nice jacket,” Jared says instead, fingers skimming down beneath Jensen’s lapels. “I didn’t think you owned one.”

“It’s a special occasion.”

“Why’s that?”

Jensen smiles. “We had a clean bust and booked the dealers, no loose ends. It ain’t always this easy so I want to savor my victory,” he touts.

“And I’m part of your victory?” Jared’s hands find purchase in the jacket’s fabric, spreading around Jensen’s sides to haul him closer.

“I seem to remember hearing you had plans for me,” Jensen says, desperately needing the thing that’s been dangling in front of his face since last night, taunting him. He’s crazy for it, unwilling to admit how wound up the Doc’s gotten him just yet. “Can’t we just…”

“Yeah,” Jared sobers, his eyes intent. “We can.”

Jensen kisses him; there’s nothing else he needs to say.

Jared is half naked already so Jensen’s clothes bear the brunt of their focus. The Doc takes extra care stripping off his jacket and tossing it aside – so much for dressing up – and he’s patient when he gets underneath, helping Jensen get outta the snug, black shirt without tugging on his arm too much. Jared’s hands go for his belt, but Jensen stops him.

“Wouldn’t want this goin’ off in the middle of things,” he says, pulling his belt and holster off and setting them on the counter. “Might kill the mood.”

The next stop is Jared’s bedroom, down an undecorated hallway with pale green carpeting. Jared walks in, flips on a single floor lamp and waits as if Jensen’s gonna comment on the room. He couldn’t care less about Jared’s taste in furniture so long as there’s a bed that’ll fit ‘em both. Jensen’s not planning to stop for conversation; he walks to the bed and carefully pulls off his white undershirt, hearing static pops as he stretches the cotton over his ears.

There is room to spare as they fall to the mattress, denim and skin causing all kinds of friction between them. Jared’s fingers make a run for Jensen’s zipper and Jensen doesn’t stop him. At this point, amped up on the sights and smells and _fuckin_ ’ sounds the Doc’s providing, a tornado could rip through Idle and Jensen wouldn’t let Jared go for shelter.

They’ve passed the last stop sign on this road – no rest for miles.

Jared puts a match to the heat building inside Jensen. His big hands never let up on their forceful grip and Jensen knows without asking that the Doc’s the kind of man he can really tumble with, no fears and no reservations. Jensen’s always appreciated a reckless personality in bed – livin’ on the edge isn’t restricted to daylight – but Jared is working the entire package. Looks that hooked Jensen right away and a personality that dug and needled until it suddenly didn’t. The Doc’s spark kept him coming back and now he’s ignited by the full force of it.

Stripping without a show, Jensen crawls over Jared’s body, teeth grazing over the curves of hard muscle.

Jared gasps. “Didn’t think you’d be a biter.”

“You were thinkin’ about me?” Jensen asks, pulling red marks to the surface of Jared’s paler torso. “I’m flattered.”

He gentles his attentions when he drops below Jared’s belly, every touch to the sensitive skin making Jared jump beneath him. Jensen teases with his mouth, every nerve in his lips bent on finding little weaknesses to exploit.

“What else were you thinkin’?”

Jared hums as Jensen’s tongue taunts with shallow trips below the top of his jeans, his fingers curled around the denim.

“I thought you might leave town before we got a chance to do this,” Jared says around a beautiful, broken sound.

“And that would’ve been a shame,” Jensen tells him, rubbing his chin in deliberate circles over Jared’s cock. Jared’s legs wriggle out from under Jensen’s body and bend up, his knees raised as tall peaks on either side. He tugs at Jared’s jeans a bit harder. “I think these need to go.”

Jensen had entertained the idea of what he might be see once Jared was naked, but the reality is so much better than any imagining conjured late at night in a lonely bed. Jared is long lines and endless skin, fine hair on his chest and down his legs that strokes like silk over Jensen’s skin.

Keeping Jared beneath him, Jensen kneads at Jared’s chest, teeth catching his shoulder in an easy grasp. “Gonna let me fuck you?”

“Maybe I’ll be fucking you,” Jared counters, twisting Jensen’s head back ‘round to meet his eyes, fingers sunk tight in Jensen’s hair. “I am taller.”

Jensen bites at the Doc’s chin, perfectly in range. Lickin’ away the hurt before layin’ it right back down.

“I’ve got a gun.”

“That’s a stupid rule.”

“’Bout as stupid as the shorter-guy-bends-over rule,” Jensen says. He stretches up to Jared’s lips, their bodies warm and undulating together. “You want me to fuck you, trust me.”

“Why should I let you?”

Jensen devours the question with a rough tongue, pushing through to that deeper heat and bringing Jared across with him.

“Because I want to,” he growls, “and when I want something, there’s nothing that’ll stop me from gettin’ it. If I have to fight you right here on this bed, I will. I’ll roll you under me and keep you there ‘til you’re tired of being on the edge. If I have to stroke every part of you, kiss you ‘til you’re begging me, I’ll do it. You can try my patience, Jared, but I want you so bad…”

Jared bares his throat, giving Jensen a taut stretch of skin to work at. The discussion quelled, Jensen loses himself in acres of warm skin, fighting with himself to keep it slow and steady. The Doc may have given it up, but that don’t mean Jensen’s letting him off easy – he might only get one chance to make the most of things.

When his fingers slip down behind Jared’s cock, the Doc squeezes his legs tightly around Jensen.

He looks up and says, “I thought you weren’t gonna fight me.”

“I’m not,” Jared pants, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t persuade me a little. What’d you say about kissing me ‘til I was begging for it?”

Jensen laughs, crawling back up. “Have it your way, Doc.”

“Don’t call me–” Jared starts, but Jensen’s mouth is right there to shut him up.

  


Midnight comes and goes with little to mark the time besides the novelty of sharing a bed with someone other than Mo. Jensen’s too wrecked to stretch his arms and legs, a day’s worth of hurts and exertions weighing on him. He bears it well with Jared lying equally tuckered out next to him.

Jared’s bed is rumpled beyond repair; one sheet survived the maelstrom of two very enthusiastic lovers and is now tugged above their waists. Sharing one another for warmth, their bodies are slack after round two. The quiet doesn’t last long, Jared’s voice breaking into the night in a more serious tone.

“How are you still alive?”

“Dumb luck and stubbornness, mostly.”

The mattress dips as Jared rolls towards him, feeling light pressure from Jared’s fingers as they walk over his shoulder and up to his face.

“Is this what you’re gonna do for the rest of your life?” Jared touches his brow, ghosting over Jensen’s raw wounds. The contusions are gonna bruise and the torn skin’ll sting for a few days, but the pain has settled to a throb at the back of Jensen’s mind.

“Don’t see why not.” That’s what Jensen means to say, but the words don’t make it out. The job’s been his life since he was old enough to know what he wanted. ‘Course, he never meant to run with the job this far. He’d started out with the idealism of youth and the eagerness of a new recruit ready to make his mark in the great Service of Texas. Lasted five years before he hardened and saw bad guys getting off on technicalities while good men suffered.

He exhales against Jared’s wrist and pulls the hand down over his chest.

“Maybe not forever,” he murmurs.

Neither of them says anything else that night.

  


“It’s done.”

Jensen pulls the phone away to spare his eardrums while JD whoops.

“Thank God,” his Captain says. “I can’t wait to tell McKellip that he should lose my number.”

“You don’t even want to see what favors you can get outta the guy first?” Jensen asks. “That’s a damn shame.”

“Asking for favors might give Rand the idea that I’m keen on working with him again. I’d rather be the meat guy down at one of those gator farms on the Gulf.”

Jensen laughs. “It’s never too late for a new career.”

“Is it going to be an open-and-shut case?”

“These guys don’t have a prayer of gettin’ off,” Jensen says. “I identified the man who shot me and once the ballistics are run through the state lab, it’s gonna confirm that they’re responsible for the murders of Lucas Corbin and Gabriel Hicks.”

“Maybe you can get a confession out of someone and save the federal government from financing their trials.”

“Once they hear all the charges laid against ‘em, someone’s bound to start flapping their gums for a deal. But those two locals who ran with the group are gonna make good witnesses if this ever goes up in the courts.”

“If we prosecute this as a Union case…” JD whistles. “None of them will see daylight again. Union work camps aren’t exactly the minimum security rec centers the damn Americans call ‘prisons.’ Everyone’s in custody at this point?”

“Down in Greeley, yeah,” Jensen tells his captain. “Idle doesn’t have the capacity to hold ‘em long term so Toledo offered. It’ll all be in my report. I’ll finish it and get it off to you in a couple of days.”

JD hums. “How about the stash y’all found when you raided the place? Is it secure?”

“We took custody of the cash and the drugs,” Jensen explains, remembering Cassidy’s expression when she’d seen the profits the dealers had reaped. “It’s all secure.”

“Not at the Sheriff’s station, right?”

“You think I’m a rookie?” Jensen scoffs. “Got it locked down tight in an old bank building. Davis and two of the Greeley officers are taking turns watchin’ it round the clock.”

“Good, I want to close the books on this one. I’ll get in touch with the Ranger’s office up in Denver. I think Javier Bardem’s still running the show there – he’s a decent guy. I’ll have him send a unit to take custody of your perps and the evidence, but it might take a few days.”

“Thanks, Morgan.”

“So, nothing but a few loose ends to tie up and then you can get paid and move on. McKellip said he’d have his accountants wire the money as soon as arrests were made and the job finished.” JD sighs. “I might be able to swing you another job right away.”

“Listen, Captain–” Jensen hesitates. “The Sabre’s all shot up and she’s gonna need some work before I get back on the road.”

“No need to explain, Jensen. I know how you feel about that damn car. Just let me know, alright?”

“Sure,” he says. “Thanks, Morgan. I’ll be in touch.”

Mo’s got a curious tilt to his head when Jensen hangs up. The mutt’s developed a good sense for Jensen’s moods, but he’s stumped.

Jensen’s worked dozens of towns, just as many jobs, and he never sticks around longer than he needs to. When a job’s done, Jensen’s warm welcome is usually revoked. Once a town is clean, Jensen sticks out with his gun and his swagger; he rides off before anyone can not-so-subtly suggest that he make himself scarce.

He’s never been allowed to stay and become one of _them_. Jensen’s almost got himself convinced that he’s not ready to try.

Facts are, the Sabre needs work before he can race outta Colorado and his report’s barely started. Jensen knows he’s fooling himself, but it’s easier to focus on the concrete reasons for hanging around.

Leaving Mo to putter around the room, Jensen heads back to the station. There’s a warm smile on his face when he passes the clinic. Jared had asked him to stay for breakfast earlier this morning and tried plying him with coffee, but Mo was waiting and JD needed an update. The Doc’s body spread out and sleepy-warm had been mighty tempting – almost as good as the thought of fresh coffee – but until JD got his report, the Ranger was still on the job.

When Jensen gets to the station, the atmosphere inside is much different than any previous time Jensen’s come through. Cassidy’s leaning over the main desk behind a woman Jensen doesn’t recognize, but the deputy introduces her as Nordia, part of the administrative staff.

Nordia smiles when she shakes Jensen’s hand, thanking him for a few days off. “My husband’s working up in the mountains for two weeks and my son’s in school. It was practically a vacation.”

From Nordia’s cheery manner Jensen guesses Cassidy hasn’t filled her staff in on the details of their short hiatus. No reason to put people in a panic about events already behind them.

Once they’re behind closed doors in Cassidy’s office, she lets out a deep breath. “I was too keyed up to sleep last night. How about you?”

“I managed alright,” Jensen says.

“I thought you might be walking in here with your final report, ready to head out.”

“Got a few things I need to do first. It might take me a few days to get out of your jurisdiction, but if that’s a problem...”

Cassidy smiles. “You can stay as long as you need to,” she says, surprising him. “Truth is, Jensen, I wouldn’t mind if you stuck around for a few days just in case. I’ve got a lot to handle, stepping in for Corbin and keeping the details quiet. Can the Rangers spare you for a little while?”

“I wasn’t plannin’ on lining up another job right away,” he says. “I’m just about as busted up as my car. Know anyone that can help me with that?”

“Something tells me you’ve already been to see the doctor about your face.” Cassidy keeps her grin from getting too big. “As for your car, there’s a garage called Alfonzo’s over on the frontage road. Alfie works on the town vehicles and if you show him your badge, he’ll give you a pretty good rate.”

“Mind if I run the Sabre over there for a check before we start on the reports?”

“Take as long as you need.” Cassidy sighs, freckles pulling tight as she scrunches her nose. “I hate paperwork.”

The garage is a few blocks away and Jensen finds it easily. A man in a bowling shirt with a face as round as his belly walks out and sizes up the Sabre as soon as Jensen pulls in, a wide toothy grin on his face. In a thick Tejano accent, he introduces himself as Alfie.

“You ever worked on a Sabre?” Jensen asks.

“Mi sobrino has a classic car shop down in Chihuahua,” Alfie says. “I helped him out with a few. You see more of these down there. It’s an impressive car, señor, not many want to bother with an engine like this.” He winces when he sees the bullet holes, but doesn’t ask how they got there. Jensen appreciates the discretion. “It doesn’t look like the engine’s your problem.”

They walk around to the front of the car and Jensen points out two more holes. “It might be worth checking out. She’s runnin’ fine now, but…”

“But sometimes rocks can fly up and do some damage, si?”

Jensen laughs. “Just what I was thinking.”

Alfie places a hand over his heart and promises to take good care of Jensen’s girl. Fighting past the pang Jensen feels handing over his spare keys, he leaves the Sabre in one of the bays, glad he’d emptied the car before he drove to the station.

Jensen’s faces a short walk back to the station but he stops to pick up sandwiches and coffee along the way to make the impending paperwork easier to swallow. Writing up his work for the higher-ups and bureaucrats to comb through is his least favorite part of the job next to getting shot.

Hell, sometimes he’d rather take the bullet.

  


Mo begins to woof a second before Jared knocks on Jensen’s door.

“It’s open,” he calls, holding his mutt by the scruff until Jared walks in and shuts the door.

“Hey, I – whoa.” Jared only gets a few words out before Mo’s on him. The pup rears up for a good scratch before dropping to the floor and wagging his tail. Jared sets a six-pack on the table and asks, “Is Cassidy here?”

Jensen’s wearing a blank look until Jared points to the sedan belonging to the Idle Sheriff’s Department sitting in the lot. “That’s Davis’s.”

Jared raises an eyebrow.

“They offered me the Sheriff’s Mustang as a loner, but I didn’t want it,” he explains. “Davis said he’d take it and I got his sedan ‘til my car’s outta the shop.”

“Who’d you take it to?”

“Alfie.”

“He’ll do a good job,” Jared says, “but I don’t know if he’s had much experience patching up bullet holes.”

“Not like you,” Jensen teases.

“You’re the only patient I’ve treated who wasn’t accidentally shot with a hunting rifle.” Jared laughs. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re tellin’ me I’m special.”

“That’s one word I was thinking of, yeah.” Jared’s smile evens out as he spots the pieces of Jensen’s nomadic existence scattered around the room. “This is everything you carry with you on the road?”

Jensen figures the bags and boxes don’t look like much, but he’s whittled his life down to the bare essentials, everything else falling by the side of the road along the way.

“It’s easier to get up and go when you don’t have a hell of a lot,” Jensen says. “I had to get it out of the car. Sorry if it’s a little crowded in here.”

The Doc shakes his head and sees the black-labeled bottle on Jensen’s nightstand.

“Sleeping aid?”

“Just ‘cause it wasn’t prescribed by a doctor like you, doesn’t mean it’s ineffective,” Jensen says with a grin. It gives the Doc another excuse to stare at him, eyes lookin’ deeper than Jensen’s comfortable with, but if anyone’s earned the right to do that, it’s Jared. “Some nights are harder than others. I haven’t needed a drink since I got shot.”

“Too much on your mind?” Jared asks.

“Too damn tired,” Jensen says. “Thinkin’ too much is what gets me needing a drink in the first place. You ever had Texas Red Eye?”

“I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” Jared lifts the bottle and scans the label. He’s less than a foot outta Jensen’s reach and Jensen’s fingers are twitching. “They might as well call this pure ethanol and be done with it.”

Jensen breathes in a subtle whiff of cologne. Seems like the Doc paid extra attention to his appearance tonight. It doesn’t matter to Jensen, he would’ve taken him half naked again or in a burlap sack, but Jared’s wearing dark jeans, tighter than Jensen’s seen and it’s a sight his eyes ain’t done appreciating, topped with a pink shirt. Jensen wants to hate the pastel button-down on principle, but the Doc makes it work. You can take the man out of California, but you can’t beat the Californian fashion sense outta him, Jensen figures.

He grabs the Red Eye from Jared’s hand and unscrews the top, taking a long swig without flinching. Then he passes it back, voice whiskey-rough. “Have a swallow.”

“I like having a functioning liver.”

“Be a cowboy,” Jensen teases. “One sip won’t kill you.”

Jared’s forehead wrinkles in distaste. “Do you have a glass?”

“Only mouth’s been on that is mine, and you didn’t seem to mind my mouth on–”

“Fine.” Jared lifts the bottle to his lips, takes a deep breath, and gulps down a mouthful. Jensen’s more than a little turned on, even after the Doc comes up sputterin’. “It tastes like gasoline!”

“Takes some getting used to,” Jensen laughs as he takes the bottle away and sets it down, patting Jared’s back as he coughs through a fit. “Your throat won’t actually start bleeding, no matter how it feels.”

From then on they stick to the six-pack Jared brought in, sitting around Jensen’s table with Mo snoozing between their feet. Their first beers are drained during casual conversation, Jared sharing stories about local folks Jensen’s probably never gonna meet.

“What about Cassidy?”

“Hmm?” Jared sets his bottle down. “She hadn’t been here for very long when I came, but we hit it off right away, I guess because neither of us was born here. She grew up Union, I didn’t, but we were still friends. Think she’ll become Sheriff now?”

“Hard to say,” Jensen answers; he rarely dips his feet into town politics or ranks. “If she wants it, I don’t see why the county wouldn’t keep her on.”

They both reach for their second beer, alcohol steering the conversation into deeper waters.

“What about you?”

Jensen glances over with the bottle perched on his lips. He sees Jared swallow, that smooth throat workin’ through another question.

“Have you ever considered a job like being Sheriff?”

“Nope.” Jensen can’t say for sure he’s not lying, but Jared can’t read him that well yet. “Never been part of my plan.”

“What is the plan?”

“Make enough money to quit the law altogether,” Jensen says, twisting his bottle. The room’s gone quiet; even Mo’s snoring has faded to light breathing. “Then I’ll go back to Texas and buy some land, figure things out from there.”

“Doesn’t sound like a complete plan,” Jared says. “How close are you to quitting?”

Jensen sighs. He hates thinkin’ about the money – getting paid is usually a direct result of having to use his gun on someone and that idea doesn’t always sit right. But he says, “I thought this job could’ve been the out I was looking for.”

“Why’s that?”

“The money’s good.” Jensen winks but there’s no humor in Jared’s expression. The Doc is closed off, like plantation shutters pulled against bad weather. Jensen can’t figure what he said wrong so he takes a long drink and wonders at the circumstances that brought him to Idle.

A thought hits him. “Hey, ever heard of a man named Rand McKellip?”

Jared presses his lips together, shaking his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell, why?”

“He’s a man that had something to do with me gettin’ put on this job in the first place,” Jensen explains. “I thought, since he had an interest in Idle, y’all might know something about him.”

“Sorry, if he’s a local guy I don’t know him.”

“That’s fine. He doesn’t have to live around here, he just has to pay me.”

Jensen lets the subject drop and focuses on more enjoyable things. Namely the Doc and the obscene length of his legs stretched out next to Jensen’s chair – the way he spreads his thighs as if he’s invitin’ Jensen right in. Jared finishes his beer, casual as you please, like he has no idea the effect his body’s having on Jensen. But the smirk tilting the corner of his lips ruins the innocence.

Instead of going for a third beer, Jensen stands up and leans over Jared, threading his hand through Jared’s hair and tugging. Brings Jared’s lips right under him, already parted. No surprise in this kiss; they both know what’s coming and walk in with their eyes open.

It’s thrilling the way their mouths come together; there’s something new to marvel at every time. Jared is completely open underneath Jensen, throat arched back and paintin’ a pretty picture of compliance, but he knows the Doc has the strength to buck up and toss Jensen on his ass.

“I was waiting for that,” Jared says when his lips are free. “I guess we’re done talking.”

Jensen pulls Jared off his chair. Mo whines, but the mutt just rolls into the empty space where Jared’s feet had been.

“Conversation’s good and all, but it’s a crime to have you sittin’ right next to a bed when I’d rather just get you on it.”

Shirts come off while they’re standing. Jared’s hands circle carefully around Jensen’s upper arm and Jensen intervenes before Jared can check under the clean bandage.

“Later,” he promises, tilting up to catch Jared’s mouth

Their hips bump together while they kiss, sway comin’ straight from Jared’s body and flowing through Jensen. He rocks forward and Jared pushes back, Jared’s belt buckle leaving impressions on Jensen’s lower stomach. Jared grapples against Jensen’s hands, laughing and falling onto the mattress, pulling Jensen down to land next to him. They roll and curve into one another’s touch, knees slotting together to gain leverage and friction. Muscles are loose, never forcing the issue, and smiles are felt even in the deepest kiss.

Jensen nudges Jared onto his back, but Jared rolls right through the motion until Jensen’s the one pinned belly-up. Their belts are gone, jeans unfastened to let wandering hands slip and tease underneath.

“I noticed something last night,” Jared says, holding his lips just out of reach. Jensen bucks but gains no ground. “You don’t like being the one on your back.”

Jensen narrows his eyes, lips cocked and ready to disarm the Doc with a smile. “I wanted to fuck you. You seemed to like it.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He snuffs out Jensen’s smile with a long lick running down Jensen’s throat, tongue thick and supple. Almighty, Jensen thinks, Jared’s mouth is a wonder. “You don’t like being under someone, even now. I can feel it in your arms.”

Jared’s hands curl around Jensen’s shoulders where his muscles are tensed to fight; Jensen takes a deep breath and wills his body loose.

“Better?” Jensen snaps, not meaning to.

The Doc doesn’t take the bait, tongue slipping over the ridge of Jensen’s collarbone, carving out a trail between the ginger freckles dropped randomly across Jensen’s chest.

“I ain’t great with it,” Jensen says, hiding the admission behind a heavy drawl.

Instead of looking puzzled, Jared’s eyes burn dark and his grin turns wicked. “We’re just gonna have to change that.”

“Jared–”

“Let me,” Jared says, hot breath blowing over Jensen’s skin to melt his objections. “You can try my patience,” he mocks Jensen with his own words, “but I want to do this for you so bad, Jensen.”

More than Jared’s touch, more than his low voice, it’s the way he says Jensen’s name that has him givin’ in. Desire and hope, a plea for trust, all breathed into one word. Permission given, they finish stripping, never moving more than a hand’s breadth away from one another. Jensen’s been exposed, but where he’s tucked close to Jared’s body, he feels less like an open target.

Jared straddles Jensen’s hips, brown hair swinging loose around his eyes as he rocks back and forth.

“Guess you are a cowboy,” Jensen teases, arching his body into the friction. His palms are open on Jared’s stomach, thumbs moving over the blood vessels beneath Jared’s skin. He follows along to where the veins thicken and pulse above Jared’s groin, blood pumping down; it’s gonna take a lot to fill Jared’s cock, already getting heavy and warm under Jensen’s hand. He’s caught up in staring as Jared gets hard, panting above Jensen as he realizes what Jensen’s focused on.

Jensen had thrown a stash of rubbers in the nightstand earlier, hoping for these very circumstances. Jared rips one out of the foil and uses lube to slick up Jensen’s wrapped cock, twisting his wrist a few times to whet Jensen’s whistle. Jensen’s fingers still throb from pumping into Jared just a few minutes ago, alongside two of Jared’s own fingers, to loosen him up, but that tiny ache is obliterated when Jared sinks down on his dick.

On either side of Jensen’s chest, Jared’s thighs are squeezin’ so tight, he can hardly breathe. It’s worth being a little lightheaded to see Jared arching his back, chest lifted and muscles flexed.

“Goddamn,” Jensen hisses. “Look at that body.”

Jared takes the compliment and repays Jensen with a kiss when he’s finally able to move, canting his hips in a slow grind against Jensen’s groin. In all the times Jensen’s had someone sharin’ his bed, he’s never felt anything close to this, the weight of Jared overwhelming his body and embracing his soul.

The headboard becomes leverage; Jensen’s palms are spread out on the cheap wood, helping him push back and up, gettin’ deeper inside Jared each time he thrusts. Jared has his hands braced around Jensen’s ribs, clutching his sides tightly like he’s in serious need, cock dark and bouncing.

They fuck hard and heavy, sweat makin’ them rut fluidly against one another, until Jared falls against Jensen’s chest and stops moving.

“Y’alright?” Jensen asks, cock throbbing in tempo with the beat of his heart. His hands fall to Jared’s face, lifting his chin until their lips are close.

“Just making it last,” Jared says, lopsided smile lasting only until Jensen kisses him, rough lips and teeth compensating for the lack of stimulation down south.

No way Jensen can go all night, but his body’s damn willing to try – though truthfully he’s a little grateful for the moment to catch his breath.

Jared pushes back into the seat of Jensen’s hips. “Am I changing your mind at all?”

“Might be.” Jensen laughs, pressing his hips up a fraction of an inch, nowhere near enough for either of them. “Could use a little more persuadin’.”

“That so?” Jared doesn’t sound surprised. He levers himself away from Jensen’s chest, fully stretched out, and reaches behind himself. The touch of Jared’s sweaty palm is a warm shock, rubbing down his own stretched ass, squeezing the base of Jensen’s dick and fluttering over his balls. He teases further, daring fingers touching Jensen’s ass. Pure reflex has Jensen snapping his hips up to escape the pressure, sensation like the crack of a whip. Jared’s grin gains an edge and his hand retreats, rolling the soft sweaty skin of Jensen’s balls between his fingers.

“Yeah–” Jensen exhales. “C’mon, keep fuckin’ yourself.”

“I knew you’d warm up to this.”

They slide back into a fast rhythm. Jared’s cock is hard and flush with blood again – nothin’ better than a man who loves gettin’ fucked – the pink tip hitting Jensen’s belly button with every hard bounce of Jared’s hips. The head of Jared’s cock is rosy and sweet looking and if Jensen could stand to lose the pressure of Jared’s ass wrapped around his dick, he’d throw the Doc off and get his mouth on it, lips stretching and pulling the loose skin that covers it.

 _Next time_ , he promises.

“I want you to come like this, under me,” Jared says, rise and fall of his body beginning to falter. His hips come down heavy and lift nice ’n slow, muscles exhausted from working towards Jensen’s pleasure. “Want you to love it.”

“Fuck,” Jensen moans, “I do. I do, Jared…”

Jensen comes and his brain stops working for a moment just to feel the weight on his hips, Jared’s palms curling against his chest as he rocks Jensen through his orgasm.

Jared sags and collapses to the side, weight pulling him off Jensen’s slick, rubber-sheathed cock. The Doc’s hard, magnificently flushed with blood throbbing under his skin like a map pointing Jensen down to Jared’s groin.

Jensen leans over Jared’s chest, stroking Jared’s dick off fast with his right hand, the left tucked under his head. His nose drags along Jared’s sweaty collarbone, greedy for the scent that gets stronger under Jared’s arm. Jared writhes next to him, lookin’ huge on the motel mattress and moanin’ mindlessly like his brain’s got no say anymore.

He likes every sound that’s coming outta Jared’s mouth, tightening his grip to see what else he can pull from Jared. The Doc throws his head into the pillow behind him, jaw locked, and breathes hard through his nose.

Jensen wants to take him apart completely. His teeth bite lightly around the fleshy part of Jared’s ear, hand twisting over Jared’s cock, and he says, “Next time, I’m getting’ this in me.”

Jared shatters like a mirror behind a fist, heaving and groaning as the pieces cut him sweetly. Jensen’s keen to roll on top of Jared and ride that wave, exploit that hot mouth with a smothering kiss, and come all over again. He’s never been so turned on watching another man come – used to be just another act to get through – but Jared’s orgasm is violent and beautiful, even better that it comes from Jensen’s hand.

He shares that thought with Jared, in less poetic words, when they’re lying next to one another ten minutes later.

“I think you gave me a new fetish.”

“Hmm?” Jared turns his head on the flat pillow, eyes reflecting the dim motel light. His lips quirk when he asks, “What?”

“You come like a man dyin’ for it. Almost had me ready to fuck you again right there.” Jared ducks his chin, his shyness amusing after the way he’d ridden Jensen like a prize thoroughbred. “Wouldn’t mind seein’ that a few more times.”

“You might get lucky,” Jared says to the pillow. “Are you hanging around for a while, then?”

Jensen breaks eye contact. “I’m not gonna get very far without the Sabre.”

Jared hums. There are plenty of things Jensen could say but none of ‘em are going to sit right.

There’s no disguising the fact that Jensen’s always headin’ in the same direction – away.

The moment drags its feet until it passes completely, the occasional truck rolling by on the highway the only thing ruining the quiet. He’s got no thought to kick Jared out; if Jared intends to stay ‘til the sun comes up, Jensen won’t tell him otherwise. The bed’s hardly big enough for them but it’s nice to feel Jared inches away when Jensen shifts, better than sharing a bed with Mo who kicks out with his oversized feet while he chases rabbits in his puppy dreams and snores.

Jensen drifts off in the warmth of man-made heat just as soon as he stops remembering why this thing with the Doc – with Jared – could be a rotten idea.

  


Mo steals his third French fry of the night right outta Jensen’s fingers.

“Watch it,” Jensen chides, yanking the greasy paper bag across his lap and out of his sneaky pup’s reach. Mo gives him nothing but a floppy-eared, innocent look – after all, the mutt’s only taking advantage of Jensen’s distraction.

He and Mo are only an hour into an eight-hour shift watching the old bank. As far as safe-houses go, it’s not too bad. The front doors are glass set into solid oak and, inside, the unused back vault is sturdy and well-built. The only things moving outside are insects drawn in by security lights mounted on the sides of the dull brick.

Jensen thought about asking Jared to join him, but the Doc might not appreciate sitting in Davis’s sedan – one that smells strangely like grass and oranges – ‘til four a.m. watching an empty building. They’d gotten breakfast together. Jared rode in the passenger seat, directing Jensen to a hole-in-the-wall with thick Texas French toast and even better coffee, but Jared needed to put in a full day at the clinic to catch up on his own work.

“Keep an eye out, Mo. You let me know if you see anything, okay?” Jensen doesn’t need to talk, but Mo’s decent company, wagging his tail whenever he hears Jensen’s voice.

And it ain’t like time away from the Doc’s gonna kill Jensen. He can’t have Jared every night despite living in a body that craves him and a heart that throws in a plea every now ’n then. The distance feels too much like practice for the day he finally drives outta Idle, but it’s necessary.

Because he’s gonna leave. Maybe not tomorrow or the day after that, but Jensen’ll put Idle in his rearview like he has with all the towns before.

Where he’ll end up next is the question.

Texas is the heart of the Union. That’s where all the political power and most of the Union money lives, but Jensen wouldn’t be able to stand day-to-day life down there. He prefers the little towns scattered throughout the Secessionland that survived on their own; where populations started out small and stayed that way.

There are cities and town of all sizes on the mighty Mississippi River – Jensen’s worked quite a few – but there’s a different kind of tension at the Union’s eastern border with the United States, a constant friction in the air like pesky static. To the folks along the river, fifty years hasn’t been long enough to forget the divisive battles that near-on became a second American Civil War.

Jensen doesn’t blame ‘em.

Where others might think they’d be better off living in Texas, where life’s moved beyond the Division, or leaving to settle in California or the U.S., Jensen’s happy with more open land and fewer people. Idle strikes the kind of balance Jensen could live with.

Mo woofs, breaking Jensen outta his thoughts to scan the area outside the car, but the pup’s only eyeing the last of Jensen’s fries.

“Are you tellin’ me I oughta be paying attention?” Jensen asks, handing over a crispy fry. “Alright, you win.”

Thinking about Idle and what staying here for a spell would require is more than Jensen can handle, but he’s facing seven empty hours with nothing else to ponder.

It’s gonna be a long damn night.

  


Jensen’s at the station early the next morning to finish his report, used to functioning on a few scant hours of sleep. Cassidy lets him have the conference room to himself where it’s nice and quiet. Nordia pops her head in the door at eleven with fresh coffee, staying for small talk while Jensen gives his back a good stretch.

Paperwork is not Jensen’s specialty.

He holds his breath while the report’s transmitting over the satellite connection, status bar creeping forward at an infuriating pace, but it’s years more efficient than sending it by mail. Might take a week to get down to Dallas from here depending on the service and JD would be on Jensen’s case ‘til it got there.

Jensen swings by Alfie’s to check on his girl and gets the Tejano’s promise that the Sabre won’t take more than another day to fix. He’s already sick of driving Davis’s sedan with all of its funky odors – he needs his baby back.

The clinic’s his next stop, a smile on Jensen’s face when he thinks about seein’ the Doc again even if it’s just to take him out for a quick bite. But as Jensen pulls into the lot and gets out of the sedan, his expression breaks faster than thin ice under a heavy boot.

Jensen has killed before. He’s seen the light go out of a dying man’s eyes and walked into a room not knowing if he’d be leaving on his own two feet or the four wheels of a gurney. But he’s never felt the blood freeze in his veins the way it does now, his insides knotted up so bad he might drop to his knees on the asphalt. Feels like he’s wearing lead shoes; his feet are useless and his eyes are burning. Jensen can’t blink but he desperately wants to, anything that’ll erase the shock of what he’s seeing.

Jared is standing with a shorter man outside the clinic’s front door. Words don’t carry across the lot, but Jensen sees mouths moving and watches Jared shake the man’s hand, a friendly smile on both faces.

The man next to Jared is unremarkable compared to the Doc’s strong frame and bright expression. He’s built of features Jensen has never forgotten: a narrow chin that lends his face a half-finished look, close-set brown eyes that can stare down into a lawman’s soul and find the darkness, and a broad nose with wide, upturned nostrils. A man who’s never been called handsome in his life, but doesn’t give a damn so long as people are lookin’ the other way while he pulls a trick.

In the minute it takes for Jensen to get his legs to cooperate, Jared and the man disappear. Jensen swings his head in every direction but finds no hint to where they’ve gone. The front door to the clinic is shut, casting a harsh glare from the afternoon sun straight into Jensen’s eyes, but he runs, fingers already unclipping his holster.

He enters with his gun drawn, the memory of walking in to find the Doc curled up and beaten on the floor fighting with the way he’d seen Jared shake that man’s hand minutes ago.

The waiting room is quiet as a morgue; Jensen doesn’t call out.

He steps carefully, boots silent on the carpet, alert as he rounds the corner towards Jared’s cramped office. His perception is narrowed to catch any sound or the tiniest hint of movement, deliberate steps getting him within an arm’s length of the office door.

Jared steps through, nose buried in a file, and Jensen reacts instinctively. The Doc’s back cracks the drywall where Jensen shoves him up against it, papers falling like snowflakes to land around their feet.

“What the – Jensen!”

The pistol pressed hard into Jared’s shoulder knocks the rest of the wind outta him.

“Jensen”– his voice cracks –“what’s going on? Let me go.”

Jensen reads nothing but pure terror in Jared’s eyes, honest and frantic. He lets the Doc’s feet drop to the floor but barely gives him an inch to move, adrenaline waning as he holsters his gun.

“Jensen?”

“Are you alone?”

“What?”

“Is there anyone else in here?” His tone demands an answer.

“No, I”– Jared scrambles and the words start comin’ –“I don’t have any afternoon appointments, so I let Loralie go home. Why? What the hell's going on?”

“And the man you were just talkin’ to,” Jensen hisses, “if he didn’t have an appointment, then who was he?”

“What are you talking about?”

Jensen leans into Jared’s space. The Doc flinches when the holster makes contact with his thigh. His green eyes hold no warmth for the Ranger starin’ him down, only fear. Jensen doesn’t care; his mind’s a wreck, suddenly tossed back five years to when his life as a Highway Patrol officer ended and he took up the mantle of _lawman_.

“What was the plan, _Doc_? Were you gonna get me all twisted up over you ‘til I couldn’t see straight?”

“Jensen.” His name falls from Jared’s lips but he’s too far gone into a memory where Jared can’t follow.

“You kept me blind to the scam you’re runnin’,” he accuses, eyes boring straight into Jared’s gaping expression. “Is that why you’re here, Jared? No wonder you don’t fit in…you’re the inside man. Actin’ like this is your town, like you _belong_ , but you had me fooled.” Jensen stops, lips curling. “Or did you think that you could turn me – was that it? You found an angle you could work and get a little something for yourself in the meantime.”

“Enough!” Jared snaps and in the blink of an eye knocks Jensen against the opposite wall with a solid hit to his chest. He crowds into Jensen’s space and sucks the oxygen right outta the hallway. “I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about,” Jared spits, cheeks red with rage, “but you need to stop.”

Jensen refuses to meet Jared’s eyes once the tables have turned, fixatin’ on the pair of dents from where Jared’s shoulder blades were forced into the paint.

“Jensen?”

Jensen’s sick of hearing his name come outta Jared’s mouth, a different tone each time. He spins, knocking Jared hard in the shoulder, and tries to put one foot in front of the other.

Objectively, he knows he’s not thinkin’ straight – Jared fogs up his head – but emotionally, Jensen needs to get the hell out of the hallway before he does something he’ll regret. Jensen’s built a stone path out of _should-haves_ and _what-ifs_ and it’s leading him nowhere besides an early grave. One more regret might do him in.

He makes it to the door before Jared snags his arm.

“Are you gonna talk to me?”

“Leave it,” Jensen snaps. He’s surprised when Jared obeys, dropping his elbow and backing up, seeing something in Jensen’s that says he’ll get nothing further.

The parking lot’s as empty now as it was ten minutes ago – feels like a damn eternity since he pulled up with nothin’ else on his mind besides lunch and the Doc. Jensen starts the engine and hammers the gas, tearing across the blacktop like it’ll absorb his rage.

He has a good idea where he needs to be headin’.

 

  
**  
PART FOUR   
**   


  


  


East and west play tug of war with the clouds, sky split down the middle by a wall of vicious looking stratus clouds that have dropped over the mountains. There’s a picturesque blue sky to the east, fluffy high clouds floating innocently like kids unaware of the big, bad storm moving through their playground.

Black cows graze idly in open fields mindless of the weather. The barometer’s droppin’ and the air’s heavy, sky primed for that first roll of thunder.

Jensen drives under the threat of rain, past the Sheriff’s station and out of town. He doesn’t radio in.

Yellow tape flutters around the farmhouse porch in sad ribbons, but this ain’t no party. Jensen’s only been back here once since the bust to help take evidence into Ranger custody. The scene’s the same: windows looking east in an empty stare and shingles lying in a pile where they’ve slid off a sagging roof.

Everything is exactly the way it was except for the torn crime scene tape, the swirl of darkness in the sky, and the man standing below the bottom porch stair, hands crossed in front of him, waiting for the Ranger like he’s an expected guest.

Martin Byrne.

Jensen parks the sedan fifty feet from the house and takes a thorough look around before getting out; his keys remain in the ignition and the door stays open. His heart beats recklessly when he faces the porch, right hand on his holster and eyes on the man’s crooked smile.

“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t blow you outta your boots,” Jensen calls out.

“Ranger Ackles.” Byrne nods towards Jensen’s piece. “Now is that anyway to greet an old friend?”

“You’re old but you ain’t a friend.”

Byrne laughs though his eyes remain flat. “I’m hurt, Jensen. I truly am. I thought you’d be happy to see me after all this time.”

The clouds divide their battleground, Jensen’s side gettin’ darker by the minute. A solid wind catches Jensen under the arms, blowing him away from Byrne and the porch.

“What the hell are you doin’ here, Martin? Come to finish what your drug dealers started? That operation was a little low, even for you.” Jensen widens his stance. “Are you disappointed they only got a piece of me?”

“I am deeply offended you’d think that, Ranger,” Byrne says in a put-on drawl. His mocking gentility is nothing new for Jensen. Byrne had used the same tone over and over five years ago to wile out of half the charges against him. “I regret that those miscreants shot you but you did an admirable job putting an end to their operation. You just keep getting better and better at this job.”

“So you’re here to congratulate me? I’m flattered. Now do me a favor and turn around, put your hands behind your–”

A shot zings through the charged air, the bullet meeting dirt a yard from Jensen’s left foot. Jensen can’t help but flinch; Byrne hasn’t moved.

“Getting arrested wasn’t part of my plan today, Ranger.” Byrne’s smile twists and Jensen gets his first hint of the pathological madman he knows is hidin’ behind that sour face.

Jensen eyes can’t make out the gun or the shooter but he knows the shot came from inside the farmhouse.

“Think you’re gonna find something in there?”

“I was hoping,” Byrne says, “but I knew you’d be smarter than that.”

“Your guys slipped up a lot, made ‘em easy to take down.” Jensen smirks. “I blame poor management.”

Byrne shakes his head. “Is that what you’re thinking? That I was behind that pathetic group? You were right when you said that was beneath me.”

Jensen schools his expression to keep the surprise out of it. The incoming storm is distracting, a beautiful kind of restrained violence just waitin’ for the right moment to be unleashed.

“Don’t tell me you stopped by just to see me?”

“I was rather hoping to not see you, Ranger, no offense.” Byrne takes a step forward on his spindle legs. Jensen’s hand squeezes the butt of his pistol and Byrne throws his hand up. “No, no, let’s just take it easy. We’re just talking, right?”

“You wanna talk, Martin?” Jensen hisses. “Then _talk_.”

Hardly fazed by Jensen’s demand, Byrne looks back at the sad, old farmhouse. “I figured there was nothing here, but you’d already seen me talking to your nice doctor so I didn’t have any reason to keep hiding.”

“You and the Doc have a nice chat, did ya?”

“He’s a good man,” Byrne says with frustrating politeness and Jensen has to restrain his instincts before they have him wringin’ Byrne’s neck. “He had a lot to say about what’s been going on in town these last couple of weeks, you in particular.”

“Like you didn’t already know?”

Byrne doesn’t answer him. Jensen’s suddenly itching to have the sedan’s door between him and the man he’d put behind bars five years ago; Martin Byrne is unpredictable at best, sadistic at worst. Jensen prays to God that he’s facing Byrne on a _good_ day.

“I learned a few new things.” Byrne sighs, nothing genuine in the sound. “I’ll be honest, Ranger, I’m on a pretty tight schedule here and the fact that you haven’t cleared out of town puts a wrench in my plans.”

“Guess you’re just gonna have to leave then,” Jensen says.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, but it’d be in your best interests to put Idle behind you very soon. You could make things real easy, Ranger, and just tell me where you’ve stashed the money and the drugs that I know these dealers were kind enough to leave behind.”

Jensen falters. “Mind tellin’ me how you know so much?”

Byrne just laughs. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to clear out, Ranger. I think I’m being more than reasonable, here.”

“Over my–”

Another shot bites the dust to Jensen’s left, echoed by distant thunder. Storm’s closin’ in.

“Careful”– Byrne’s grinnin’ like a fool –“or I’ll make the rest of that phrase become a reality. I’m not looking to have you killed. I don’t want to attract too much attention, you know? But I’ll do what I have to.”

 _So will I_ , Jensen promises silently. His trigger finger’s itching to draw but there are lines Jensen won’t cross, even for Byrne. Not if he wants to keep the last shreds of his soul from dyin’.

Thunder rolls again, closer this time.

“Now do yourself a favor and get back in your car,” Byrne tells him, turning his back on Jensen and walking up the porch stairs. “Looks like it’s gonna pour.”

  


“Hang on a second.” Cassidy holds up her hand. “How do you know this guy?”

Jensen leans forward gripping the back of the chair. His hair’s still wet around his ears from running into the station through the afternoon downpour, a chill on his skin as he’d dragged Cassidy into the conference room and slammed the door.

“Martin Byrne was busted by the Rangers a little over five years back and I was headin’ up the Highway Patrol squad that brought him down.”

“He was trafficking drugs?”

Jensen scoffs. “Drugs were the least of it. Byrne was the go-to guy for gettin’ things over the borders. He ran drugs across the Union between California and the U.S., provided slave labor for the East Coast, even sold black market military weapons from Mexico to homegrown militias in the Territories. If you needed something smuggled, Byrne was the man you called.”

“Then why the hell isn’t he in a Union prison?” Cassidy asks, frustration sharpening her tongue.

“Beats me,” Jensen says. “He oughta be. Byrne made a lot of friends doing business – a lot of straight-types who needed a criminal to make back-door deals for them. He’s connected, you know? I mean, when he was on trial down in Texas five years ago, half of the charges were dropped and he was only sentenced to fifteen years.”

“When it should have been a hell of a lot more.”

“Right.”

“And now he’s somehow out and he’s here.” Cassidy shakes her head. “But why? Why _here_? You said yourself that this drug operation was way too minor for him to be pulling the strings.”

Jensen’s been thinking non-stop about that since he watched Byrne walk into the farmhouse. The threat of an unknown number of shooters had kept him from drawing his weapon and following. Byrne wasn’t leaving town, Jensen knew that much, so he’d driven straight back to the station to find Cassidy.

“It’s the money,” Jensen says a full minute later. “He wants everything we confiscated.”

Cassidy’s bitin’ at her lip. “But how’d he know about it?”

“I don’t know,” Jensen lies; he’s got an idea but he needs to play it out before he shoots his entire career in the foot. “I’ve gotta call my boss. At the very least he can tell us why Byrne’s not rotting in a Union camp and maybe even who he’s been workin’ with lately. In the meantime, we need to make sure the bank’s secure.”

Cassidy straightens her shoulders and sighs. “Davis is over there now and one of the Greeley officers is supposed to relieve him at eight. I’ll drive over there and fill him in.”

“Switch cars,” Jensen tells her. “Use something unmarked when you’re over there and get Davis to stop using the Mustang when he’s on a watch shift. Let’s not make it obvious that we’re keepin’ an eye on that particular building.”

“Good idea,” she says. “Do you mind manning the station until I get back?”

“Nah. I need to call in and get my head around this. Might be better for you to stay with Davis at the bank just in case and there’s nothing here Byrne wants.”

“Besides you, apparently.”

Jensen scowls. “Then he knows where to find me.”

“You’re gonna stay?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

Cassidy holds up her hand. “Hang on, Jensen. This guy basically told you he was going to kill you in twenty-four hours.”

“I’ve lived with less warning.”

She ignores the quip. “And you’re staying in town?”

“The job’s not done,” he says. “Radio back when you get to the bank.”

Once Cassidy leaves, and with Nordia gone for the afternoon, Jensen’s alone in the station. The Union flag droops on its flagpole in the corner of the room, a draft from the ceiling fan hitting it every now and then. The blades rattle like a clock ticking slowly – must be a screw loose somewhere – but it’s quiet otherwise. Too quiet for Jensen to think right.

JD Morgan doesn’t answer his extension. Jensen bites the bullet and dials the switchboard, but the meddling assistant tells him the Captain’s out for the afternoon. An _emergency meeting_ , she calls it and doesn’t say when he’ll return; Jensen grits his teeth and doesn’t leave a message.

The sun never reappears after the storms move through. Jensen carries his mug of tepid coffee to the front window after trying to reach JD a third time with no success. The street’s empty, pavement dark and slick, and the normal bustle of late afternoon activity is unusually diminished.

Jensen sits at the main desk where he can see out – every car driving by gets a second look.

Cassidy calls in to say that they’ve seen nothing suspicious at the bank. She and Davis switched out their cars for two non-descript sedans from Alfie’s lot and Jensen tells her to stay put until officers from Greeley can relieve them. The circle of people who know about the bank is a small one; Jensen hopes like hell that Byrne’s in the dark. No sense takin’ chances with such a valuable stash.

At a quarter past five, Jensen returns to the front desk with a file from Corbin’s old office and finds he’s no longer alone.

Jared’s regard is as sharp as broken glass and just as dangerous. His eyelids are sagging a little, his jaw set like he’s holdin’ back a tirade. His navy blue shirt’s wrinkled – the same shirt Jensen had bunched in his fist hours ago – and his hair’s been worked behind his ears. Jensen stares right back, off balance, with his expression set in stone until a yip grabs his attention.

At Jared’s heels, Mo is squirming on his makeshift leather leash – which Jensen rarely uses – trying to get free. The Doc lets him loose and Jensen’s mutt bounds across the room. Jensen kneels down and rubs the soft fur covering Mo’s belly.

“Hey, Mo.” Jensen keeps his voice low so it doesn’t break. His stomach sinks like a cement block; he’d forgotten about his pup. “Did he get out of the room?”

“No,” Jared says. “I went by the motel looking for you and I heard Mo whining through the door.”

Jensen narrows his eyes. “How’d you get in?”

“Jensen–”

“How?”

The Doc sighs. “The manager’s a patient of mine – good guy. I told him I was there to take Mo out and he let me in. I didn’t touch anything, Jesus.” His chest deflates. “Sorry, I was just worried about your dog.”

Jensen’s been see-sawing between confusion and resentment all afternoon, needin’ to know where Jared stands in this mess. It changes things to have him here, tense and apologetic and just as confused as Jensen.

Jensen had been ready to write him off as an emotional casualty of the job, but trust ain’t something Jensen gives easily. He refuses to believe he invested in _more_ with Jared for nothing.

“I can take him back if you need me to,” Jared says, rolling his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels. “I just couldn’t leave him in the room crying like that.”

Jensen straightens from his crouch and Mo clambers up onto his big paws, trotting over to see if he can get the same treatment outta the Doc.

Jensen’s instincts rarely steer him wrong. He looks at Jared who’s bent down to scratch behind Mo’s ears despite the disappointment in his eyes that’s meant for Jensen and he can’t feel a drop’s worth of suspicion.

“Alright,” Jared sighs. “You know what? I don’t care. I can’t stand the silence and I thought if I came here, you might tell me what’s going on. I deserve that much after the way you–” He shakes his head in lieu of finishing.

Jensen’s cheeks are burning. Shame’s not something he feels too often.

“Whatever,” Jared says with textbook Californian inflection, “I’ll get out of your way.”

The Doc takes two steps before Jensen gets a hand on him. Jared spins away from the touch but Jensen holds on and the impact carries them into the station wall. Jared ends up boxed between Jensen’s arms. Jensen sees the significance of their position too late and Jared’s already forcing space between them.

“God, what’s running through your veins?” Jared asks, granting Jensen no forgiveness. “I’ve never seen you ice-cold like this.”

“Jared…” Nothing Jensen can say is gonna help him out of this hole. “I didn’t mean to scare you at your office, but things’ve changed.”

“Must’ve been a _big_ change.”

Jensen ignores that. “I made a mistake thinkin’ I couldn’t trust you.” When Jared crosses his arms, Jensen takes the gesture as consideration instead of the Doc putting a barrier between them. “You’re an outsider here and when I saw you talkin’ to–”

“An outsider,” Jared sneers. “We’re back to that, huh? Like you don’t know my entire life story.”

Jensen butts into the Doc’s tongue lashing. “I don’t.”

“What?”

The truth’s the only play Jensen’s got at this point. “I know where you’re from, Jared. I know where you were born and where you worked, but I didn’t look any deeper.”

“You’re serious,” Jared says. Jensen lets him work through it to a point. “I’m surprised. I guess I thought you’d know everything.”

“If I thought it mattered to my job, I might’ve asked,” Jensen tells him, scanning the room for his mutt to avoid meetin’ Jared’s eyes. “I wasn’t gonna press you.”

“Oh. I guess I thought–”

“Nothing to say, Doc.” Jensen gives the nickname enough affection to keep Jared’s hackles from gettin’ up again. When he looks back towards Jared and the front window, a gleam catches his eye. “Hey, did you leave your headlights on?”

“No,” Jared starts to turn, “why?”

Jensen doesn’t think. He turns and seizes Jared around the waist, momentum taking them both to the floor a second before the glass behind Jared comes apart in a rain of shattered glass.

Dozens of gunshots hammer the front of the building, bullets hitting the aluminum with deafening blows. Flashes from multiple firing pins precede each shot, lighting up the station. Stray bullets take out two of the three large overhead lights, flickers of dying fluorescence reflecting in Jared’s wide eyes where he’s pinned under Jensen’s weight.

Debris and glass fall around the two men as Jensen regains a few of his senses and drags Jared on his belly over behind the metal filing cabinets. Either the walls are shakin’ around them or Jensen’s eyes are wobblin’ in his head from the noise.

“Stay here!” Jensen shouts, barely hearing the words in his ears. The Doc might be a lip-reader ‘cause he nods and makes his body as small as possible. _Good man_. Mo’s nowhere in sight and Jensen prays the dog’s somewhere good and hidden.

On his stomach, Jensen snakes towards the front of the station, sitting up so his back’s to the wall next to the front door. It takes a moment of crushing, pressurized quiet for Jensen to realize the shots have stopped coming. The whole ordeal might’ve lasted a minute but Jensen feels the weight like he’s just lived through a war.

“Ranger Ackles!” Jensen recognizes Byrne’s mocking civility coming from outside the station. “You all right in there?”

Jensen’s left arm is throbbin’ in sympathy from the gunfire. He stays low – last thing Jensen needs is to get shot in his good arm.

He twists his neck to yell out through the broken window. “You concerned for my safety, Martin?”

“I’m offended, Ranger! I wanted to know if you’d thought about my generous offer.”

“It’s only been a few hours! I thought you knew how to tell time.”

“Just wanted to make sure you knew I was serious,” Byrne shouts back.

Jensen’s desperate to look outside and see what he’s up against. Byrne wasn’t alone at the farmhouse and there’s no way all those shots came from one gun. Best case scenario, Jensen’s guessin’ there are three shooters in addition to Byrne.

 _Fuck_.

“Oh don’t worry, I figured that out.”

Jared’s folded up against the filing cabinet, listening with wide eyes that don’t blink.

Byrne exaggerates his laugh so that it carries into the battered station. “I thought you’d be long gone by now! I was very clear when I told you that I don’t intend to fall behind schedule.”

“All this gunfire is mighty distractin’,” Jensen shouts back. “I can barely think!”

“That’s a shame, Ranger! I’ll be fair and give you the night, but clear out by morning or my _concern_ for your safety will be severely compromised.”

“That’s kind of you, considering I have no concern for yours!”

Byrne laughs again. “Have a pleasant evening, Ranger!”

Tires crunch over rough gravel and Jensen gets up onto his knees. Through the distortion of broken glass he sees a white utility van pulling away, evening darkness preventing him from seeing who’s driving.

Jensen’s up and runnin’ before he can think better of it. Jared screams, “Wait!” but Jensen’s already out the door, drawing in one smooth motion and firing at the van. Anger messes with his aim and the bullets scatter, but Jensen empties his entire clip, pulling the trigger long after the bullets are gone.

Over the click of the dry-fires, he hears footsteps on the gravel. Jensen spins on his boot heels and comes face to face with the Doc.

“Fuck! Jared…”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t sneak up on a man like that.”

“I didn’t,” the Doc says. “I said your name a couple times.”

Anxiety’s layered over the terror that has yet to fade from Jared’s green eyes and Jensen hates seeing it.

“Mo?”

“I saw him under a desk. He’s okay.” Jared wrings his hands together to stop the shaking. “Jensen?”

Jensen lets out an unsteady breath. “Yeah.”

“You’ve gotta tell me what’s going on. After this, you can’t keep me in the dark.”

There’s no sunset for Jensen to take comfort in. Where the sky’s not gray, darkness is creeping in from the eastern horizon. Today – hell, this entire job – has been turned on its head and Jensen’s spinnin’. He’s not sure which way is out anymore.

“It’s like I said, Jared. Things have changed.”

  


The street outside Jared’s apartment is empty and Jensen’s grateful for that small favor; he’s not in the mood for any more surprises. Streetlights cast dim balloons of neon illumination over the sidewalk, nothing moving between the shadows of squat buildings and budding trees.

At Jensen’s feet, Mo wakes up and looks around, stretching his legs and settling back on the carpet when he sees Jensen hasn’t gone anywhere. The pup hasn’t been more than a yard away from either Jensen or Jared since they left the station. Jared had followed Jensen to the motel in his own car and waited with Mo while Jensen picked up clothes and supplies – weapons that drew Jared’s wary stare but he didn’t object – before they drove to Jared’s place to settle in for the night.

The apartment over the clinic is easier to defend, less obvious in case Byrne tries something. Those are the cold, hard facts, but deep inside the quiet part of Jensen’s heart, he knows he didn’t want to be alone.

When Jensen turns away from the window, he can see the Doc’s long body twisted up in his sheets. Jared protested when Jensen told him to get some sleep, but he’d been out almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

They’d talked for hours over sandwiches and pop. Jensen reluctantly told Jared about his history with Martin Byrne – the Doc deserved it after being shot at – and despite being shaken and drawn, Jared shared the details of Byrne’s impromptu visit to the clinic.

“He walked in and claimed he’d sprained his wrist,” Jared had told him. “It was weird.”

“How?”

“He asked a lot of irrelevant questions, nothing that made me suspicious, though.” Jared had sounded apologetic.

“Byrne’s been conning people for a long time, he knows how to get the info he needs without triggerin’ anyone’s instincts.”

Jared had sighed then. “You know, he reminded me of you a little bit.” He’d tried laughing but they both heard the brittle crack in the sound. “Only your interrogation technique was a lot more hostile. Maybe I should have found it strange that he was so pleasant.”

“Most lawmen have been on the job too long to be nice when they’re questioning someone.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“And his wrist?” Jensen had asked.

“I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, but that kind of injury is easy to fake. I should have been more careful. I can’t imagine what you thought when you saw me shaking his hand.”

Jared had waved off Jensen’s second attempt at an apology. With anyone but the Doc, Jensen wouldn’t have even tried.

Jensen had tried again to reach Morgan from the clinic’s long distance line. JD’s assistant was gone and there’d been no answer on his office line.

On the other side of the world, the sun’s slowly making its way back around to the Secessionland. Come morning, Byrne’s gonna be expecting Jensen to hightail it out of the territory but there’s no decision for Jensen to make. He was sent to do a job and it’s not done, simple as that.

Jared turns over in his sleep, forehead scrunching as he encounters something troubling in his dreams.

Maybe not so simple, Jensen reconsiders.

The silence in the apartment isn’t helping Jensen keep his eyes open. Giving up on his vigil and caving in to the demands of his exhausted body, he strips out of his jeans and shirt and leaves them in a poorly folded pile on top of the dresser. Jared’s unconsciously left plenty of space on the bed and Jensen crawls between cool sheets. He tries not to jostle Jared but his eyes blink open.

“Hey,” Jared mutters drowsily. “Time’s it?”

“Not even close to daylight,” Jensen whispers, holding himself perfectly still as Jared moves into his arms.

The kiss Jared lures him into isn’t intended to set a fire between them. Behind their lips, the emotions are unique and unidentifiable, more like comfort being offered and received. They roll between the linear shadows cast by Jared’s window blinds, scars and bruises hidden in the darkness and touched gently in the light. Jared’s fingers comb through the short hairs at Jensen’s temple where he knows he’s gone a little gray.

They might stop, or they might kiss benignly until one or both of them fall asleep. Either way, the softness carries Jensen under.

  


“Jensen… Jensen!”

Jensen wakes up to Jared’s sharp tone in his ear. The sun’s risen on judgment day; Jared’s bedroom is washed in the hazy light that comes with dawn. There’s a dull throb behind his eyelids and before he even moves, Jensen knows he hasn’t gotten enough sleep to ease all of his aches and pains.

“Jensen.”

He turns on his back, meeting Jared’s eyes across the bedspread. The Doc doesn’t look much better than Jensen feels, but the alertness in his stare rouses Jensen the rest of the way.

“What?”

“Get up,” Jared says. “Cassidy called. Something’s happened.”

  


Cassidy’s one crack away from falling apart.

Freckles stand out on her pale complexion, her eyes colder than Jensen’s ever seen. She’s traded her uniform for faded black jeans and a blue t-shirt. Jensen might give up on the badge, too, if he’d been through all she has in the last two weeks.

Jensen had radioed and told her about the damage to the station the night before, but she’s pacing through the debris as if the wounds are fresh.

“Paula,” Jared tries, but she shakes her head.

The Doc had walked into the station behind Jensen, too early yet to open the clinic. He’s not entirely sure he wants Jared two steps behind him all the time – puts him right in the line of fire – but Jared wasn’t hearin’ no for an answer.

“Deputy.” Jensen takes the direct approach, appealing to Cassidy’s sense of duty. She finally stops pacing and turns. “You’ve gotta fill me in.”

She nods. “Toledo called me at my house a few minutes before I left to come here. Three gunmen in a large, white vehicle opened fire on the Greeley police station in the middle of the night.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Jared jumps in.

“Two officers were admitted to the county hospital with gunshot wounds and one of them”– Cassidy’s shoulders shake –“he might not make it.”

“Shit.” Jensen curses. “It had to be Byrne.”

“After you told me what happened here last night, I called the Greeley station to pass on the news. They knew…”

“Hell, I never thought their station’d be a target,” Jensen says. “Byrne’s lookin’ for the money and he’s just guessin’ at where it might be.”

“I wish you’d shot him when you had the chance,” Cassidy says bitterly.

“I’m beginning to regret that I didn’t.”

Jared glances at him. The Doc knew about Jensen and Byrne’s war of words at the farmhouse less than twenty-four hours ago and he knew that if Jensen had even drawn his piece, he’d be lyin’ full of holes on a coroner’s slab.

Bless the Doc for caring.

“I’m going to relieve Fuller and Nash at the bank,” Cassidy’s saying. “They ought to be with the rest of their squad.” She looks around the station and sighs. “I don’t even want to get into fixing this place right now.”

“I’ll join you,” Jensen tells her. “Byrne knows the car I’m drivin’ so we can go in yours.”

A phone rings from underneath a pile of paper and plastic shards from the panel lights that’d been shot out. Cassidy digs until she finds the receiver.

Jared steps up at Jensen’s side. “What can I do?”

“You can go back to the clinic and keep the door locked between patients. Take Mo down there if you want.”

“But–”

“Go with me on this, Doc,” he says.

“You don’t want me out there with you?”

“I want you _safe_.” Jensen tells him. “I can get you a shotgun from my room, if you want.”

“I don’t want a gun,” Jared says roughly. “I’m not gonna change your mind, am I?”

Jensen shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Jensen,” Cassidy calls over, “your Captain’s calling in. You can use the phone in Corbin’s office.”

He walks past Jared with a quick nod, feeling his heart pound. No telling what JD already knows but Jensen needs answers either way. Shutting the door behind him, Jensen picks up the phone on Corbin’s old desk.

“Hey, Captain.”

“What the hell’s going on, Ackles?” That JD’s using his surname means the captain’s pissed. “I’m getting reports of multiple shoot-outs up there. I thought you’d wrapped this!”

“It’s Byrne.”

Silence. Jensen waits with the receiver pressed to his cheek, sweaty skin warming the mouthpiece. His nerves are sending all kinds of crazy signals – anxiety, distrust, frustration – as there’s no response from the other end of the call. Jensen can’t even hear his captain breathing.

JD’s voice comes back on the line in careful, measured syllables. “What are you talking about?”

“Martin Byrne is here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” JD mutters, probably to himself. “I thought that bastard was still down in Mexico.”

Jensen clenches his teeth and takes a deep breath. “You knew he was outta prison? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He got out six months back. The Rangers were keeping tabs on him,” JD says. “We tracked him down to Mexico hoping he’d get busted down there and get put away in one of their camps for the rest of his life.”

“ _Were_?”

Morgan sighs. “Lost him a couple of months ago. The Mexican government wasn’t too keen on us following him down there in the first place.”

“I thought Byrne was unanimously denied parole?”

“The first time, he was.”

Jensen asks, “What changed?”

“My guess? The amount of money in bank accounts of the board members.”

“Pay offs.” Jensen doesn’t turn it into a question. Byrne’s resources and connections were unrivaled in the criminal world. “Shit.”

JD listens without interrupting as Jensen relates Byrne’s appearance in Idle and the subsequent action. By the time Jensen’s through, his captain’s cursing in low tones.

“I’m thinkin’ back on everyone I talked to up here,” Jensen tells him. “I just feel like…”

“Like you can’t trust anyone,” JD completes his thought. “Like it’s ripping up your insides when you think about it?”

Jensen laughs humorlessly. “Something like that.” He double checks that the office door is closed and sits in the old Sheriff’s chair. “Can I run something by you?”

“Go ahead,” JD says.

“You haven’t heard from McKellip lately, have you?”

When the captain’s silent for a second time, Jensen knows he’s hit on something.

“He hasn’t called since I told him you were finished up there, but I left a message with his personal secretary two days ago.”

“And he hasn’t gotten back to you?”

“What’re you getting at, Jensen?” JD asks with a noticeable lack of patience.

JD has yet to fire Jensen for a theory. Jensen sighs and says, “I remember Randall McKellip, Senior, being one of the richest men in the Union before he died, and the pride of Austin, Texas,” Jensen adds derisively. “But I also remember him dodging half a dozen corruption charges when business was really booming.”

“Ol’ Randall knew how to make money,” JD says.

“Not always in a legal manner, right?” Jensen asks. “You know, I read some of those cases years ago when Byrne was busted by Highway Patrol.”

“Why?”

“’Cause Martin Byrne was mentioned in the Attorney General’s files as a possible accomplice.”

“McKellip and Byrne?”

“The old man would’ve needed someone like Martin in his organization, but Byrne never gave him up when he was arrested.”

“That’s loyalty.”

“Or fear,” Jensen says. “Randall McKellip was all about business and he must’ve had bigger fish in his pond than Martin Byrne back then.”

“You’re thinking that Rand McKellip’s taken over the family business and gotten in bed with Byrne? That’s some serious talk, Jensen. I mean, the man’s headed for a presidential bid, but hiring a man like Martin Byrne?”

“Not many people in Texas could afford the pay-off it’d take to get Martin out of prison.”

On his end of the line, JD hums. Jensen crosses his fingers that the captain’s feelin’ generous today. If he aims at McKellip then swings and misses, there’s no telling what kinda job he’d end up with.

“What’s the game, Jensen? What’s Byrne looking for up in Idle?”

“Beyond a pay day, I don’t know yet,” Jensen admits, “but I wondered the same thing about McKellip when you told me he had an interest in this town. Before the drug dealers came through there was nothin’ here but farmland and people with regular troubles. And Byrne’s not a drug dealer, Morgan – he’s a mover and a seller. He’ll unload the drugs somewhere else and make out big, but someone put him here.”

“I don’t like where this is headed,” JD says.

“Try workin’ up here!” Jensen snaps unexpectedly. He regrets it as soon as the words pass his lips. “There are too many bullets bein’ fired up here with _my_ name on ‘em.”

“Hold up there, Jensen,” the captain cuts in. “Tell me what you need.”

“Get me the details on what Byrne’s been up to since he got out, everything you had on him _before_ you lost him.” Jensen shuts his eyes but it only makes the headache drill further into his temples. “And call in back-up, Captain. I think I’m gonna need some help up here.”

“Can you lay low until I look into some things?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“The last thing we need is another shoot-out up there making headlines down here. It makes us look incompetent.”

“That’s none of my concern,” Jensen gripes. “I’m just tryin’ to stay alive.”

“No big moves, Jensen,” Morgan’s tone brokers no argument. Jensen’s fuming but he listens. “Consider it an order if that makes you feel any better. Keep Byrne from taking the money and that’s it – there’s nothing else you can do. We don’t need any bad press on this. Don’t make a move until I get back to you.”

Before Jensen can protest, the line disconnects.

When Jensen walks back into the main office, Cassidy’s by herself at one of the desks where she’s shoved debris aside to write on an open corner.

“I had to make some calls about getting the station secured,” she tells Jensen. “New glass, a new door, and we’re gonna need an electrician. Anyway, did your boss shine any light on Byrne being up here?”

“I’ll tell you about it when we get to the bank,” Jensen mutters unhappily. “Where’s the Doc?”

“He left to open up the clinic,” Cassidy says. Her eyes take on a little bit of light. “Jared told me to tell you that he’d take care of your dog.”

Jensen ignores the way she’s starin’. “Ready to head out?”

The deputy takes a long look around the room, biting her tongue. Eventually, she nods and they walk out together. The sun’s up and on its way across what’ll be a perfectly blue sky. A light breeze draws warmer air up from the southwest and the leaves on the trees are a little bit brighter after yesterday’s rainstorms.

Jensen sighs as he gets into Cassidy’s car.

It’s a beautiful day in Idle for absolutely no reason at all.

  


“Got any family, Cass?

She faces Jensen from the driver’s seat, sun-visor casting a wide shadow on her upper face. They’ve been sitting in silence for nearly forty minutes and the quiet’s beginning to needle.

“A daughter, actually. Her name’s Sarah.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen,” Cassidy chuckles. “She was a bit of a surprise.”

Working together, Jensen has caught a handful of hints to Cassidy’s softer side. “Where is she now?”

“She’s living with her father in St. Louis.”

“You’re married?”

“Nope,” she says, but she’s grinning fondly. “Tony and I never tied the knot, but we’re friendly. Once Sarah started high school, he and I decided that it’d be better for her to stay in one place and I tended to move around a lot looking for jobs. I didn’t know I’d be sticking with this job for as long as I have, so I went along with it.” Cassidy sighs, adding, “I miss her, but I’m glad she’s not here. Not with everything that’s happened.”

Jensen doesn’t blame her. Too many innocent people have been caught in the crossfire and now JD’s got Jensen sitting on his ass, doing nothing. His anger won’t do more than simmer, though; JD had good ‘n smothered that fire. He can’t see the point in waiting around for Bardem and his Colorado Rangers to ride in, and Martin Byrne’s certainly not sittin’ back or takin’ it easy. Jensen knows that the longer it takes for Byrne to find the money, the worse things are gonna get for everyone in Idle.

“I am so sick of staring at this bank,” Cassidy says after a while. “I never thought of it as an eyesore until now.”

“We should move everything,” Jensen answers blithely.

She laughs. “Where to? We’re running out of good places to hide things.”

“Someplace more interesting to look at.”

“We’re short on those too, Jensen.”

Cassidy’s smile evens out, her stare focused inward. Jensen watches her blank expression for a minute and wonders what she’s workin’ out behind those ice-blue eyes.

“Cass?”

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “The waiting’s the worst part, you know? We don’t know when Byrne’s coming…if he’s coming…” She trails off, dipping her head to look straight into the sunlight. “What do you think he wants with the money?”

“I’m still puttin’ that together,” Jensen says. “Maybe once my captain gets back to me, I’ll know more.”

Cassidy nods and pulls out of the sun. “I don’t suppose he’ll just leave us alone if he gets the money, huh?”

Unfortunately, Jensen’s considered that as well. “I don’t think so. He’s got plans and Idle’s smack in the middle of ‘em.”

She sighs. “Just wishful thinking, I guess.”

They lapse back into a watchful silence, conversation popping up every now and then to break the monotony. Jensen’s nothing more than a sleep-deprived zombie with a badge and a gun by the time Davis shows up to relieve him, driving the cloth-topped Jeep he’s borrowing from Alfie’s auto yard. Seeing the Jeep reminds Jensen of the mechanic’s promise.

“I’m gonna swing by Alfie’s and see if my car’s ready,” Jensen tells the two officers. “I’ll be back after I get something to eat. Need anything while I’m gone?”

“Take your time,” Davis replies far too cheerfully for a man facing another grueling watch shift. Jensen catches the look Davis shares with the Deputy after he gets in the car; the man’s got a piss-poor poker face but Jensen’s not about to ask.

Cassidy shakes her head. “Fuller should be here in a few hours.” Glancing at Davis, she adds, “We’ll be okay if you need to be somewhere else tonight. Looks like you could use a few hours of sleep. Just keep your radio with you.”

Jensen’s too run down to argue. He walks the few blocks between the bank and Alfie’s, cursing the afternoon sun and the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Maybe he oughta buy a hat.

Nah, hats are for cowboys and those damn fool U.S. Marshals.

Jensen gains a small measure of peace having the Sabre back, her mechanical bulk comforting under his hands. There’s no such thing as _good as new_ with a car like his, but Alfie had done a remarkable job fixin’ her up. Her wax-shined panels flash in the sunlight like an expression of joy to be on the road again.

He drives the car openly – no doubt Byrne knows the Sabre already – from the auto shop back to the motel for a change of clothes.

The motel room is just four walls and a bed, lifeless without Mo. Jensen showers for the invigoration of cold water on his skin, needing the jump start after spending so long in one attitude. The shirt Jensen grabs isn’t fresh, but it’s cleaner than the one he’d worn to the station that morning and he grabs his gray jacket to cover the stains under his arms. At least Jared seems to appreciate the damn thing.

Charlie’s bar is beginning to fill up by the time Jensen walks in craving fried chicken and that absurdly sweet tea Jared got him hooked on. Feels as if Jensen hasn’t eaten a normal meal for days – just catching a bite here ‘n there – and his stomach’s about to revolt on him.

The noise coming from the occupied tables doesn’t bother Jensen as much as it used to. He appreciates the sound of voices, regular people sharing the day they’ve had and laughing, and the general clamor of a busy restaurant. News of the station shoot-out must have spread around Idle by now, but life continues uninterrupted as if there were no other way.

Jensen took this job to help the same people who are sitting around the bar: the couple sharing a plate of French fries in the corner and the two bearded townies up at the bar who are trading stories over cold drafts. He came to Idle for Charlie and his business, for Cassidy and Davis and their dedication to a thankless job, and for Jared.

He eats quickly intending to swing by the clinic before spending the majority of the night at the bank despite Cassidy’s suggestion. If guarding the cash is the only thing JD’s gonna let him do, then Jensen’s gonna do it, though he’s itchin’ to get after Byrne. Too bad he doesn’t know the first place to start.

But a piece of Jensen’s conscience – the rarely-acknowledged softer side that’s not wrapped up in duty – tells him to check on Jared and Mo before anything else. Call it peace of mind, but it’ll definitely mend something inside him once he knows they both made it through the day alright.

Jensen’s pickin’ the last shreds of meat off a drumstick when a thin shadow falls intentionally over his table and dims his view. There ain’t enough optimism in the world to make Jensen think it’s the Doc come to join him this time.

He turns his head and looks right up into Martin Byrne’s dark eyes, the smile out of proportion with Byrne’s narrow face. Jensen shifts, imperceptible to his enemy’s eye, and considers drawing on him right there. He could end it here, no tellin’ what his own fate would be, but he could put an end to the terror Idle would face otherwise.

“Now, now,” Byrne opens his lyin’ mouth, “you really want to disturb all these people?”

Jensen keeps his hand on his holster, unfastening the leather holds.

“I don’t remember orderin’ an asshole with my dinner.”

“Just relax, Ranger,” Byrne says, slipping into the seat across from Jensen, “I didn’t come here with the intention of harming anyone.”

 _Yeah, all criminals are saints_ , Jensen thinks, rolling his eyes. “Then I guess I’ll be on my way.”

Byrne stops him from moving out of the booth. “However, I do have men watching the parking lot just in case. Let’s talk.”

Jensen scoffs and shakes his head, clearly recalling the last time Byrne wanted to talk and the shoot-out he’d faced later that night.

“You must like the sound of your own voice.”

Byrne decides not to indulge him with an answer. Now ain’t that ironic. He appraises Jensen, the cruel sharpness of his eyes digging for something to exploit.

“You’re still here.”

“That surprise you?” Jensen counters.

“Not really, no,” Byrne says. “Some of my associates thought you’d be halfway to Texas by now, but I told them not to underestimate a Ranger’s commitment to his job.” The Devil’s lurking in the upturn of Byrne’s smile. “Unless the _job_ isn’t really what’s keeping you here.”

Jensen sets his shoulders and doesn’t take the bait. Byrne shrugs it off.

“Well, the reason’s not important. What matters is that you’re still here.”

“Gonna take me out right here, Martin?” Jensen’s voice rumbles. “In front of all these witnesses?”

Byrne’s fingers skim through a ring of condensation and he reaches for Jensen’s napkin to wipe them off. Jensen’s stomach rolls with Byrne this close, his harmless appearance a façade for the sinister mind that’s runnin’ the show.

“I intended to have you killed,” Byrne says casually, like he’s telling Jensen about the weather, “but then I realized it would be a waste of your talent. You’re good at your job, Ranger. The efficiency with which you took out those drug dealers – it was impressive.”

“You liked that, huh?” Jensen asks. “Then let’s just walk outta here nice ‘n easy and I’ll show you just how well I deal with the bad element.”

“Oh, I’ve known for a while,” Byrne says. “I did my research.”

Jensen bares his teeth. “Wanted to see who’d you be up against?”

Byrne chuckles. “No, I wanted to make sure I was hiring the best.”

Jensen’s jaw locks up so tight he can barely get a word out. “ _What_?”

“You’re the best there is, Jensen.”

It’s disgusting to hear his name coming from Byrne’s mouth, but Jensen fights past it.

“Nice try,” he grates. “Now get the hell outta here.”

“You don’t believe me. I thought you’d be flattered.” Byrne pretends to be offended, hand on his chest. “I wanted you for this job because you know what they say? Experience is everything.”

Shivering under a sudden chill, the tremors twist Jensen’s expression into a deadly glower. His teeth might crack under the pressure and his cheeks are roasting despite the ice filling his spine.

“What’s the game?” he hisses.

Byrne must truly get off on hearing himself speak. “I’m here to provide a service, Ranger, and I was disappointed when I learned that a few knuckle-headed cartel rejects had set up shop in this territory.” He leans closer as if he’s attempting to conspire with Jensen. “Now, I could have killed them myself, but then the state would’ve sent in some wet-behind-the-ears cops and made things worse. Who knows how long that’d take? My business would’ve been ruined.”

Jensen sneers. “Pity.”

Byrne ignores him again. “But you! You can put away a whole lot of bad men and get a promotion for it. It’s a win-win situation. I know this makes me look lazy, but with you up here to take out the competition, using your badge, things ran a lot smoother. I should probably thank you –”

“The hell with you!” Jensen snaps, voice low and lethal. “Whatever I did up here, it wasn’t for you!”

Jensen’s surprised they haven’t drawn any attention. Out of the corner of his eye he can see his waiter, a corn-fed farm boy with too many freckles under his red-hair, perched with his elbows on the bar. There’s a football game on the TV, players only a few inches high on the screen, that’s got everybody hooked.

“Now we’re splitting hairs,” Byrne says. “You did the job I needed you to do, no matter what your reasons were. Though,” he smirks, “I think I know one of the _big_ reasons.”

“Watch your mouth or I’m gonna put a bullet through it.”

Byrne’s mask drops just like that and Jensen’s facing the sociopath he’d taken down five years ago.

“Alright. I came to make you a deal.”

“Twenty-four more hours?”

“I regret using that cliché,” Byrne says. “Honestly, I want you on my side. You and I are at a bit of an impasse, and I can pay you well for your services.”

“You mean your politician can pay me.”

Byrne pauses, raising an eyebrow. “Should’ve figured you’d know about that.” He snorts derisively. “Rand’s a whelp.”

“A whelp with deep pockets.”

“Still a whelp,” Byrne counters. “He’s nothing like his father – doesn’t have the stomach for hard business.”

“And just what kind of _business_ are you gettin’ into with the spoiled son of a politician?”

“Ah-ah,” Byrne says, “you don’t get to learn all the secrets until you join the club. Now, you haven’t told me what you think of my offer.”

“I think you can take your offer and shove it up your –“

“Careful,” Byrne cuts in. “I know who’s worked their way beneath that hard, brooding exterior. You can’t protect everyone, and I intend to find where you’ve hidden all that money. I can only be so patient before I bring more firepower than you and your motley crew of lawmen can handle. I’d hate to see Idle turned into a ghost town, but I won’t hesitate to level this pathetic place.”

Byrne presses on. “Help me get the money and everybody walks out of this in one piece. Think about it, Ranger,” he says as he stands, “and don’t worry, I’ll know where to find you.”

Jensen’s suddenly speechless. With his nerves blunted, the impulse to fire back doesn’t make it from his brain to his lips. He can’t react fast enough to stop Byrne from casually walking out of Charlie’s, the bell over the door ringing happily as he leaves. As soon as Jensen can move, his delayed reactions hit all at once; he pulls his gun and runs to the door, ignoring the frantic shouts of people around him who are alarmed by the sight of his weapon.

Jensen stands in the middle of the parking lot with the kicked-up dust of tires peeling out settles on his shoulders and around his feet. His eyes are burnin’, vision whiting out at the edges.

Like a rookie, he’d assumed things couldn’t get any worse. The weight of being wrong again threatens to bring Jensen to his knees in the unpaved lot, but he needs to move. He needs to get to Jared, to _someone_ , and get his head straight.

Jensen’s never felt so alone in his life.

 

  
**  
PART FIVE   
**   


  


  


Facing off against the gentle sympathy in Jared’s green eyes eventually breaks Jensen. The Doc’s got him on the couch like some poor sucker gettin’ his head shrunk, but Jared’s right next to him, fingers twisting on his lap like he wants to reach out.

Jensen wouldn’t object if he did.

He’d driven to the clinic in a haze, trusting the Sabre to get him there in one piece. The relief in Jared’s eyes had quickly faded when he saw Jensen’s face, empathy turning the Doc’s expression to helplessness. Mo had curled up at Jensen’s feet once he was sitting, head resting on Jensen’s boot.

It isn’t until the fourth time Jared asks him what’s wrong, the Doc’s lower lip this close to trembling, that Jensen rallies enough of his addled brain to answer.

“It’s all on me,” he tells Jared, “everything that’s gone down. I’ve done the best I can and we’re still screwed.”

Jared presses with a composure Jensen envies. “How do you mean?”

“Byrne, the guy who–”

“I remember,” Jared cuts him off. “What happened? Is everyone okay?” His fingers lose the battle of restraint and cup around Jensen’s knee. “Are you okay?”

“Okay?” Jensen’s laugh turns brittle; his body shakes off emotions without his mind’s consent. He’s thinking about Cassidy and her daughter, the Greeley officers who’d given up so much for Idle, and Morgan’s order to stand down. All those folks in Charlie’s bar just trying to make a living. “How am I supposed to be _okay_?”

Jared opens his mouth – probably ready to call Jensen crazy – but Jensen’s mouth is off and runnin’. The words fall out one right after another: the basics of his conversation with JD and the quick and dirty version of what Byrne told him at Charlie’s. Jensen stares at Jared’s hand the entire time.

When he comes to Byrne’s deal, he hesitates.

“What’d he do?” Jared asks before the silence gets awkward. “Did he try to bribe you or something?”

Jensen hangs his head.

Jared gasps. “Oh _shit_. What did you tell him? What did he say he was gonna do?”

“I never answered him,” Jensen says. “I never got the chance, but he was serious, Jared. He could hurt a lot of people. You don’t know him.”

“But I know you,” Jared counters Jensen’s dejection with faith. Jensen can’t argue knowing that the Doc’s right. “You’re not someone who can be bought, no matter what.”

“I’ve never had a reason before.”

“Bullshit.” Jared stands and starts pacing in front of the couch, bare feet dark against the pale carpet. “No reason’s worth selling your integrity to this fucking psychopath and letting him get away with whatever the fuck he’s got planned.”

Jensen looks up and attempts to smile, a little on the pathetic side. Jared catches the expression when he turns back and his shoulders slump.

“No, no – Jensen…” He sits even closer to Jensen this time. “I’m _not_ a reason!” He says it vehemently like that’s the only way it’s gonna make it through Jensen’s thick skull. “This guy’s asking you to sell your soul.”

“It’s not worth much,” Jensen says, picturing his soul as some old road sign beaten and weathered down – too dirty to make out which direction the arrows are pointing. “I’d be doing it for you.”

Mo rolls over on the floor, a content little whine rumbling in the pup’s chest. Jensen’s grateful for an excuse to break from the Doc’s stare, watching the easy rise and fall of Mo’s breathing. Jared slouches forward, elbows on his knees, and focuses on something between his feet, words comin’ in a strained whisper.

“Don’t put this on me,” Jared begs. “If you’re so eager to hand your soul over to someone… Hell, give it to me. At least I’m not gonna make you suffer for it.”

The least appropriate response Jensen can think of is the one he goes with. He leans across those last few inches and kisses Jared on his dry, pursed lips. Could be he does it to stop Jared from saying anything else they’ll regret, but that doesn’t account for the way Jensen lets the kiss open softly, cupping Jared’s jaw in his palm and letting desire quench the anxiety runnin’ through him.

Jared breaks off to catch his breath and laugh, burying his face in his hands, fingers stretching the skin over his forehead. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“I didn’t know you were so sentimental, Doc.”

“Oh shut up,” Jared groans, but Jensen sees dimples peekin’ out through his fingers.

Jensen breathes a little easier under the lighter mood; he never wants to leave the circle of the Doc’s company if this is the effect he has. Jensen’s always been keen to avoid domesticity – all that normal stuff intimidates the hell outta him – but here he’s practically _curled up_ with Jared having a heart-to-heart in a warm apartment, his pup perfectly happy at their feet, and he’s got no urge to run.

Well, almost no urge. Byrne’s holed up like a rat somewhere in Idle and Jensen’s got no time to enjoy a moment like this.

“You were never actually gonna join up with Byrne, right?” Jared asks after the embarrassment’s drained outta his complexion.

“Yeah,” Jensen admits with a clearer head, “I just needed someone to tell me that.”

“I’ll kick your ass whenever you need me to.” That earns the Doc a genuine smile. “Do you have to go back to the bank?”

Jensen yawns.

“Guess that answers my question,” Jared says. “I have some notes to transcribe – can’t afford to hire anyone to do it for me yet. You should lie down, you look tired.”

“Meanin’ I look like crap.”

“Hey”– Jared throws up his hands, gets up, and backs towards the kitchen –“if that’s what it takes to get you to sleep.”

“You’re lucky I like you,” Jensen grumbles, grinning as he nudges Mo to the side and toes off his boots. Jared comes back with a handful of folders and watches Jensen get settled on his couch.

There are plenty of things in Idle that might kill Jensen, but fortunately a nap’s not one of ‘em.

  


Static cracks through Jared’s living room. Jensen blinks his bleary eyes open and scowls at the radio on the coffee table.

“Sonuva–” He sits up, rubs his face, and grabs the pesky device just as Jared walks into the room. “Ackles.”

 _“It’s Cassidy.”_

“Hey.” Jensen looks up and meets Jared’s equally wary gaze. “Everything alright?”

“ _Yeah, don’t worry_ ,” Cassidy says uselessly. Worry’s a default emotion these days. Her voice crackles but Jensen gets most of her words. “ _I stopped back at the station for a few minutes to meet a contractor for an estimate and I saw a bunch of papers piled up under the fax machine. I looked, and they’re surveillance notes along with some old case files, all from your captain_.”

“I’ll be right over to get them.”

“ _I can drop them off at Jared’s on my way back to meet Davis if you want_.”

“Nah, that’s okay”– Jensen cuts himself off –“you knew I was here?”

“ _Educated guess_.” Cassidy doesn’t even try to cover the smirk in her voice. “ _You sure?_ ”

“Yeah. You gonna be there?”

“ _I’ve gotta get back to Davis. We’re keeping busy_.”

Jared grins and walks through the living room toward his bedroom, disappearing for a few minutes.

Jensen rolls his eyes. “I don’t even want to know what that means.”

She chuckles. “ _I’ll leave the papers in Corbin’s office, and I can swing back by the station later. Fuller called and said he’d be up in a couple hours. They had some stuff related to the shoot-out to take care of down there. Davis and I are gonna stay on things until then._ ”

“Guess I’ll see you later then.”

The frequency goes dead just as Jared comes back wearing a navy blue hooded sweatshirt over his tee and jeans.

“What’s up?” Jared asks.

“I’ve gotta run over to the station to pick up the reports Morgan sent.”

“I’ll go with.”

Jensen thinks twice about the Doc’s casual offer before he nods.

Jared finishes zipping up his sweatshirt. “Should we take Mo out first?”

The pup woofs at the sound of his name and bounds on his big feet outta the kitchen. Mo ends up at Jared’s feet, ready for a walk.

Jensen shrugs but trails after the Doc and his dog as they head for the door. “Hey, it’s your carpet.”

  


Jared hesitates before following Jensen into the station. Some of the debris has been cleared away to leave a path to the back offices.

“Wanna wait in the car?” Jensen offers, stepping over dull shards of textured plastic.

“No, I’m okay.” Jared’s words don’t match up with the expression on his face, but he follows in Jensen’s footsteps around the front desk.

The lone fluorescent light buzzes amongst the ceiling tiles; Jensen doesn’t let his eyes stray beyond the oblong circle of light it casts. Station’s hardly empty, but Jensen fights the chill runnin’ down his spine. It’s creepy, no doubting that.

Jensen pulls out the key to Corbin’s office, finds the files exactly where Cassidy said they’d be, and grabs the whole stack. Like the back offices, the small conference room was spared any significant damage. He lays the papers out on the table and looks over at Jared who’s hovering in the doorway.

“I’ll see if maybe I can make a pot of coffee or something,” Jared says before he ducks back outta the room.

Jensen lets him go and scans the top page.

It’s worse than he’s expecting.

Half of the pages are surveillance notes from the team that tracked Martin Byrne down to Mexico, the scrawl of rookie Rangers detailing Byrne’s comings and goings south of the border. The scumbag had kept himself busy but nothing stood out as _criminal_ other than a few meetings with a man whose name Jensen knows well.

Xander Berkeley was a confident son of a bitch, put away and subsequently released from a Mississippi state prison before Jensen was even started at the Academy, but his case was standard training material. Berkeley had been the king of the gun runners in his day, slipping through the loose fingers of the law until his business was toppled by the Rangers.

All those charges hadn’t kept him in prison for his full term though, Jensen remembers. Berkeley and Byrne are two peas in a fuckin’ pod. If they were meeting regularly in Mexico – taking full advantage of Mexico’s sour disposition when it came to cooperating with the Union or the U.S. – it was a bad sign.

Too bad the Rangers couldn’t keep their damn eyes on either one of ‘em. Instinct’s driving Jensen to think Berkeley’s not involved in the Idle job Byrne’s trying to pull; it’s insignificant to a man with his reputation. On the other hand, Jensen doesn’t want to imagine the sort of tricks Byrne could learn from Berkeley’s cruelly efficient mind.

The rest of the stack is pages from a single case filed nearly a year ago.

Case itself is nothing spectacular: a man caught with a cache of illegal semi-automatics in Union Wyoming – probably trying to smuggle them up into the Territories for a good profit – who was sentenced to life in prison as a multiple-offender. JD’s made a note on one of the last pages, brackets around an apparent confession the man made before he was sentenced, hoping for a reduced term.

 _Stanford claims Randall McKellip Jr. of Texas provided times, locations, and orders for delivery of weapons._

The officer who’d written the note had underlined McKellip’s name, but the next entry in the file stops Jensen.

 _Aaron Stanford, 29, of Branson, Missouri, killed during altercation in Wyoming State Penitentiary. Stanford was stabbed with a homemade prison blade by inmate 3847: Walter Hines, 52, of Austin, Texas._

Jensen frowns. Seems like McKellip had been in the market for a new partner after this Stanford kid turned on him – a man who knew guns and how to move ‘em.

Byrne’s a perfect fit, and the money he’d make from selling off the drug stash would buy plenty of guns.

“Anything interesting?”

Jensen hadn’t seen the Doc return. He’s standing in the doorway with his hands in his sweatshirt pockets.

“Don’t think that’s the word for it,” Jensen says, stretching his hunched back. “No luck with the coffee?”

Jared smiles tiredly and opens his mouth, but whatever comes out is drowned in the explosion of glass beside him, a bullet ripping through the interior window and spraying wickedly sharp shards across the conference room. Jensen watches the Doc stumble sideways in slow motion, hit the door and nearly fall backwards.

Someone catches Jared before he goes down.

Jensen flies outta the chair and grabs his gun but it’s too late. A steel muzzle is pressed right up against the back of Jared’s head, forcing him further into the room as his shoes crunch over the broken glass.

The hammer on the gun cocks.

Jensen goes cold at the sound, every nerve in his body grinding painfully to a halt.

“Put your weapon down, Ranger,” Byrne orders, his narrow build partially hidden behind the door frame.

“Alright, alright.” Jensen pulls his pistol slowly and sets it on table, maintaining eye-contact with Jared as he does. “What the hell’s goin’ on, Martin?”

“Change of plans.”

Byrne twists the muzzle against Jared’s head and Jensen swears, in that moment, to put a bullet between his eyes the first chance he gets. The Doc’s pupils are wide and terrified, begging Jensen for help that he can’t give without getting them both killed.

Through the demolished window, Jensen sees two other men in the station. Square-shouldered henchmen dressed all in black, both with weapons trained on Jensen. If Byrne were alone and less of a yellow-bellied coward, Jensen might take a shot, but with the extra firepower – not to mention the barrel of Byrne’s gun so close to Jared’s brainstem – he’s outta options.

Jensen steels himself, drives everything but Byrne and Jared out of his mind.

Time to go it alone.

“I thought we were gonna work something out,” Jensen begins – nothin’ he can do about the strain in his voice. “Make a deal to end this in a way that suits us both.”

Byrne holds his arm rigidly; Jensen wishes Jared could see the weakness in that kind of grip. Jared doesn’t know how to hold his body while _he’s_ held at gunpoint. He’s stiff and in obvious pain from hitting the doorjamb, no chance to press for an advantage. They’re harsh reminders that Jensen’s led the Doc into deeper waters than he can handle and a wave might be comin’ to drown ‘em both.

“No more deals, Ranger,” Byrne hisses. He’s lost the calculating edge, eyes like black marbles rolling around in his head. “It’s time for you to tell me where the money is.”

“Let the doctor walk outta here and that’s what we’ll do, you and me.”

“You’re being so sensible,” Byrne laughs, the sound sending a shiver prickling down Jensen’s spine. “After all that attitude and swagger, and now you want to be reasonable?” He snorts, jamming the gun harder into Jared’s skull. The Doc flinches, a hiss slipping past his lips, and Jensen wishes he could bear that pain. “Did you tell the doctor here what I was planning to do if you didn’t help me get what I wanted?”

“It doesn’t matter, Martin. I’ll get you what you want.”

Byrne steps a little closer to Jared, hissing in his ear and keeping his eyes on Jensen. “You like it here? Idle’s a nice town, but the Ranger here is keeping me from what’s mine, and unless he tells me where he stashed it, I’m going to _wipe this town off the map_.”

“Jared–” Jensen pleads. He can’t care what Byrne’s gonna think, he can only see the horror brought to light in Jared’s eyes as Byrne’s threat sinks under his skin.

“I’m not just going to scare them off, Doc”– Jared and Jensen both flinch when Byrne takes a bite at the nickname –“I need this town, but I’ll see it burned to the ground before I give up what’s mine!”

Jensen sees the cracks in Byrne’s composure. Between their stand-off at Charlie’s and here, something set Byrne off, winding his inner-psychopath up to dangerous levels. With JD’s reports stirring at the back of his mind, Jensen’s got a pretty good idea why Byrne’s frantic all of a sudden.

“I’m the one you need,” Jensen says, eyes always coming back to Jared to lend all the reassurance he can muster. “Just me, Martin. Let Jared leave, he’s not a part of this.”

Byrne bends his elbow – the gun’s gotta be weighing down his arm. If only the Doc wasn’t right in the middle of things….

“If I bring _Jared_ along, you might be more inclined to cooperate.”

“You said you’d let him go if I helped you.”

“I don’t see you helping me!” Byrne shouts. He whips the gun away from Jared’s skull and points the barrel at Jensen. “Give me the location!”

Jensen opens his mouth a second too late. Byrne squeezes the trigger and Jensen shuts his eyes, waiting for the _nothing_ to take him; a bullet to the head cutting his unremarkable life short.

But the darkness is gone as Jensen blinks and the room comes back into focus. Jared’s as white as a bed sheet, his eyes looking over Jensen’s shoulder where Byrne’s shot hit the wall, missing Jensen’s temple by no more than a few inches.

 _Hope that miss was intentional._

Byrne takes aim one more time. “Last chance, Ranger. This one won’t miss.”

“The bank!”

Jensen and Byrne both turn when Jared yells the location. The Doc’s face is a mess of wet eyes, bitten lips, and pale cheeks, his mouth gaping like he can’t believe what he just called out.

“What was that?” Byrne asks, keeping the gun on Jensen.

Jared looks right into Jensen’s eyes, fear runnin’ the show. Jensen has to lock his knees to keep from crumbling to the floor.

“Spill it, Doctor!”

Jared exhales, fighting against himself. The gun decides it for him.

“It’s all at the old bank up on Canyon Road.”

Byrne’s expression changes immediately; Jensen’s never seen such a vicious smile on anyone.

Jensen wants to lash out against Jared for ripping up the only card they had left to play. The disappointment’s gone in a flash, though, as Jensen realizes it’s not gonna help them get outta this.

The move’s been made; they need to start playing to survive.

“You know where your money is,” Jensen says, trying to get Byrne away from Jared. “Let him go, Martin. He won’t call anyone.”

Byrne waves the gun, motioning Jensen and Jared out into the main office. The henchmen plow through the debris like pigs through trash, moving toward the door.

“This isn’t your show anymore, Ranger,” Byrne says, pressing everyone out into the parking lot. “Time to take a ride.”

A beefy henchman separates Jensen from Jared; Jensen can’t even reach out to reassure him. The Doc’s walkin’ like a zombie, concentration required to put one foot in front of the other. It’s better than fighting when he’s got no advantage and gettin’ himself killed, Jensen supposes.

Jensen tries to follow Jared when the Byrne’s men lead the Doc toward the white van idling in the station’s lot, two more gunmen waiting by the panel doors, but Byrne jabs him in the back with the barrel of his gun.

He grins in the wake of Jensen’s thunderous expression.

“Let’s take your car.”

  


Jensen holds the steering wheel in a white-knuckled, unforgiving grip. Next to him in the Sabre’s passenger seat, Byrne’s half-turned toward him, gun between them.

He silently apologizes to his girl for letting Byrne ride in her, but the gun to his head doesn’t leave him a choice. Byrne orders him to follow the van to the bank, taillights shining red like the Devil’s stare out ahead of the Sabre. He’s tempted to jam the gas pedal and rear-end the van, knock it off the road somehow, but Jared’s in that van with four men and, more importantly, at least four guns. Jensen can’t act until he knows he can keep Jared safe, biding his time until they arrive at the bank where whoever’s watching the place can back him up.

He’s expecting Byrne to gloat – chat him up with some inane, psychotic banter – but the man’s stewing silently, beady eyes locked on Jensen’s every move until a sharp chime sounds in the car.

Jensen nearly slams on the brakes.

“Keep driving!” Byrne orders, pulling a wide black device out of his jacket pocket.

A goddamn satellite phone, Jensen curses silently. Those are hard to come by unless you know someone high up in one of the telecommunication corporations. Jensen knows exactly where Byrne’s came from.

“Not a good time,” Byrne hisses into the phone, heavy pauses between blunt sentences. “I told you, I’m handling it! No, I got the location. The bank building on Canyon Road, we’re heading there now.” He listens to whoever’s on the other end, an unpleasant expression turning Byrne’s already ugly face into a disaster. “Don’t bother coming! I’ve got things under control, just stay put.”

He clicks the phone off in a huff, shoving it back in his pocket.

“Trouble in paradise?” Jensen quips.

“Mind your own business.”

Jensen can’t help smirking. Seems like Rand McKellip is keeping his new pet smuggler on a short leash.

With Idle as small as it is, the drive to the bank only takes a few minutes. Jensen’s barely had a chance to run through a plan in his head; he’ll have one chance to signal Fuller or Davis, or whoever’s watching the bank tonight, and get Jared outta that van.

But that one chance is crushed into dust as soon as Jensen pulls up to the bank.

The adjacent lots are completely empty, not a single vehicle in sight except the Sabre and the van.

 _What the fuck?_

Byrne orders him to slowly get out of the car. Standing in front of the bank, Jensen’s still faced with a whole lot of nothing.

Every horrible possibility occurs to him in the span of a few seconds. Was Byrne lying? Had he already hit the bank? Why the hell would he bring Jensen here if he already had the money? Cassidy would have called or someone would have radioed if anything had happened, Jensen tells himself.

Unless there was no one left to make that call….

“Looking for something?” Byrne’s staring at Jensen. One of the gunmen from the bank is standing at his side. “Let’s go. Take us to the money.”

Jensen’s brain comes back on-line. “What about Jared?”

“The doctor’s gonna be just fine,” Byrne says with no discernible emotion, not even scorn.

“I want to see him,” Jensen demands, digging his heels into the gravel.

Byrne signals someone in the van and the side-panel slides open. Inside, Jensen can see Jared hunched over with his knees pulled into his chest, one gunman hovering over him with a weapon blacker than the night.

“Let him go,” Jensen hisses. “I got you here.”

“As soon as I’ve got what I want.”

Even with two guns drawn on him, Jensen spares a moment to find Jared’s eyes. The security lights are just bright enough for him to make out the stiff line of Jared’s lips, the hard angle of his jaw. Between the station and now, the Doc dug up some small amount of fight from deep within.

Thank God, the Doc’s still with him.

All out of patience, Byrne severs the connection between their eyes by shoving his gun into Jensen’s shoulder blade.

“Now, Ranger.”

Jensen’s lost count of the number of difficult things he’s done over the years, but turning his back on Jared and the van is one of the roughest. Five minutes from now, they might be dead, but Jensen’s not giving up until he’s sucked down his last breath, and Byrne’s not taking that from him without a serious fight.

The oak door looms, Jensen leading Byrne and one of his gunmen up to the bank. The dark panes of glass set into the wood show Jensen his own pale, resolute expression. He looks himself in the eye, steeling his nerves.

Get in and get Byrne what he wants. The money’s not worth anything to Jensen – it’s nothing but a prize the Rangers are intent on claiming – and he can live with losing his badge, so long as he and Jared make it out of this. But Jensen knows better than to trust the words and assurances Byrne’s been dropping. It’s up to Jensen whether he lives or dies tonight.

Byrne’s impatient, ordering Jensen to open the door to which only he and Cassidy have a key. On the other side, Jensen’s surprised but relieved to find nothing but dust and shadow. No bodies or bloodstains littering the colorless tiles, and nothing to indicate that there’s a trap waiting for Jensen.

“Where’s it stashed?” Byrne asks, looking around the old, out-of-use lobby.

“There’s a vault in the back.”

“Show me.”

Jensen wasn’t too fond of Byrne to begin with, but the way he is now, tense and clipped, is worse than Jensen’s faced before. Someone ripped out Byrne’s short fuse and trampled it into the dirt, and now Jensen’s gotta watch his step. One spark and Byrne might explode.

The vault is nothing special. A town like Idle wouldn’t have needed anything fancier, just reinforced walls, a few deposit boxes with their own keys, and thick bars set into a steel frame behind the outer, ambiguous door. It’s little more than a cage and while Jensen and Cassidy have kept the vault closed, they’ve never been able to lock it.

“It’s open,” Jensen says.

Byrne waves him forward with the gun. “So you won’t have a problem going in first then.”

The steel inner door groans when Jensen pushes it open. Feeling against the wall, Jensen bumps into the metal stand of a portable fluorescent light Cassidy had brought in and he flicks it on, the bulb’s sinister buzz filling the enclosed space.

The vault is empty.

 _No, no, no!_

Jensen’s feet are bolted to the floor. The eight bank boxes that had contained the drug dealers’ profits and the rest of their stash are gone, nothing remaining but faint outlines like corpse chalk written in the dust.

He doesn’t know what to think because he _can’t_ think past the missing boxes and the footsteps scuffed in the dust, until Byrne and his henchmen follow Jensen into the vault.

Seems like Byrne can’t see past the emptiness either; his eyes blaze in the harsh light.

“This some kind of joke, Ranger?”

Jensen just shakes his head; the bastard’s called the hand and Jensen’s holdin’ a whole lot of nothing.

Byrne’s cheeks turn red, his shout bouncing off the unforgiving steel and stone.

“Where the _hell_ is it?”

Byrne’s rage gets the better of him and, in the next second, he drops his gun hand and Jensen charges. No chance to second-guess himself, he barrels into Byrne’s chest and sends him reeling back into his henchman’s body, both armed men slamming into the steel bars.

The other gunman tries to shove Byrne away, get his arm up to take a shot, but Jensen’s right there knowing he’s got nothing left to do but fight his way outta here. A vicious kick between the legs has Byrne dropping to his knees like a heavy sack of manure, clutching at the man behind him. Byrne’s gun slides through the dust and hits the wall, outta reach for all three men.

While the burly gunman’s distracted by Byrne’s whimpering, Jensen seizes the opportunity and grabs the metal light stand. He hoists it up and strikes Byrne’s man right across the face with the aluminum lamp.

The gunman hisses and screams when the heated metal sears his cheek, reflexively kicking Byrne in the ribs and knocking his boss to the stone floor. Jensen backs away as Byrne falls and tries to whip the gunman again with the lamp but the man roars through his pain and fires off a shot.

Luck’s got her eyes on Jensen tonight as the bullet strikes the metal stand between his hands. Sparks fly and the shot zings off, ricocheting into the door of a safety deposit box. The light drops out of Jensen’s grip and clatters to the floor, bulb flickering before it burns brighter in its death throes.

Byrne pushes himself up onto his feet, helpfully gettin’ between Jensen and the henchman’s weapon.

Jensen has one shot and he takes it while Byrne’s blocking his gunman’s aim. He drops, rolling for Byrne’s weapon lying in the corner of the vault. Wrapping his fingers tight around the steel grip, Jensen brings the gun up and sees Byrne’s eyes widen in sudden realization.

But when Jensen exhales and pulls the trigger, it’s not Martin Byrne who bellows in shock.

No, the bastard ducks out of the way at the last second, stumbling against the steel bars of the inner door. Jensen wonders if he’s missed entirely, seeing the henchman’s gun aimed directly at his heart, but the man’s eyes aren’t focused. Dark, glassy pupils roll back in his head and his arm drops just before Jensen sees the bloodstain spreading across the man’s shirt.

Copper and death mix in the air, stinging Jensen’s nostrils.

The henchman collapses, blood smeared grotesquely on the wall behind him. Jensen finally breathes again, sucking down air and gasping as he stands to look around the vault.

Byrne’s gone.

Jensen runs out of the vault and hears a creak. Martin Byrne is at the main entrance, slipping through the front door.

“Byrne!” Jensen yells, but the man’s already through.

Jensen reaches the door in seconds, yanking the heavy oak back and raising his gun, ready to shoot anyone standing between him and Jared. He shouldn’t be surprised that what he sees in the lot isn’t what he’s expecting.

The white van hasn’t moved, the side panel’s open but there’s no one inside. It takes a second for the lights to register in Jensen’s eyes, pulses of red and blue. There’s a familiar tang to the air, burnt powder and heat that hits Jensen’s senses.

The fight in the vault wasn’t the only battle that went down here tonight.

Vehicles surround the utility van in a half circle – some he recognizes and a few he doesn’t – police lights flashing from every direction. Three massive bodies, all of them dressed in black, are sprawled in the lot and dark tracks of blood on the ground reflect the lights from the cruisers.

And Byrne is there on the ground, dirt on his clothing and scratches on his hands and face from tumbling down the steps of the bank. On his knees, Byrne’s got nowhere to run.

“Jensen!” Cassidy’s voice calls out from his left. “We’ve got them.”

Jensen blinks and Cassidy comes into focus. She’s standing behind the passenger door of the Mustang, Davis on the other side. He recognizes two cars from Greeley and the imposing figure of Mac Toledo amongst his officers to the right. And behind him, standing tall under his own power, is Jared.

From the ground, Byrne sputters. “You son of a bitch! I should’ve killed you the first chance I got!”

Jensen takes three steps down from the door and faces his old enemy.

“Yeah”– his smile twists into a grimace –“Probably should’ve.”

His arm’s swinging before he can think better of it, whipping the gun across Bryne’s cheek. The blow sends Byrne right back down onto the gravel. Jensen’s muscles recoil painfully, the blow jarring.

“That’s for the Doc,” Jensen hisses, figuring the bastard deserves a hell of a lot more for setting everything in motion, every event that led to the drug dealers beating Jared and for everything that’s gone down since.

In his periphery, Jensen sees Cassidy step forward. The look he shoots the Deputy stops her cold.

Byrne’s lip is bleeding when he staggers onto his knees, a dark trail snaking around his narrow chin, and his cheek is contused. Not good enough, Jensen thinks, and he brings the gun back down and backhands Byrne with the pistol.

“That one was just for fun.”

He’s still not satisfied, but it’ll do. Jensen engages the safety and turns towards the cars, eyes picking Jared out straight away. Cassidy and Davis are already movin’ in his direction, smiles on their faces. Whatever they’ve got to say for themselves – Jensen figures they have an explanation for the missing money – can wait until Jensen talks to Jared.

“This isn’t over, Ranger!” Byrne shouts behind him, a desperate tone from a man outta options. “You think I’ll stay in prison forever?”

Jensen keeps walking toward Jared while Toledo and his officers close in on Byrne.

“I’ll be out before you know it! You can’t stop me. You just wait! With the friends I’ve got, I’ll be a free–”

In the middle of Byrne’s rambling, someone shouts, “Gun!”

Less than a second later, a lone shot splits the air.

 

  
**  
PART SIX   
**   


  


  


The echo of the shot comes quickly.

Jensen spins on his boot heel just in time to see Byrne shudder and keel over from a bullet wound to the chest. A small caliber pistol that must’ve been hidden in his jacket falls from his right hand.

The scene goes silent and the officers look to one another. No one’s even got their gun raised much less has it aimed at the pathetic man-turned-corpse in the middle of the parking lot. But when Jensen looks past Bryne’s lifeless body, he sees a cloud of fine white smoke billowing in the beam of a security light. The gunpowder clears and Jensen sucks in a breath that’s more smoke than oxygen.

Randall McKellip Jr. is all Texas from the tooled leather of his caramel colored boots to the sterling silver slide in the shape of a longhorn on his bolo tie. Even in the darkness, McKellip’s gun gleams: a rare Silver Eagle, a high-caliber hunk of polished steel with an ivory grip.

Jensen hadn’t even noticed the politician ‘til now – too many people Jensen hadn’t expected to see in the lot – but he sticks out in his spotless gray suit and the handmade ten-gallon hat on his head, standing in front of a sleek black car.

Nonchalantly, McKellip lowers his weapon and walks into the circle of unmoving lawmen.

“That man was about to shoot you, Ranger,” McKellip says in the deepest drawl Jensen’s ever heard. He slides his gun back into the smooth leather holster around his waist and says, “You’re welcome.”

Davis and Toledo run to Byrne’s body, one man checking for a pulse while the other kicks the pistol out of reach. Jensen ignores them and stalks right up to Rand – the politician’s smug grin doesn’t crack, veneered teeth glinting.

“Ranger Ackles, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Jensen keeps his gun up, ignoring the way his arms are shaking.

“You’ve clearly done this town a great service,” McKellip says, his classic brown eyes facing off against Jensen’s unforgiving stare.

“And just how’d you know that?”

McKellip arches his eyebrow. “I’m hearing a lot of suspicion, Ranger. That’s strange considering I just saved your life.”

Jensen’s at a sudden loss. He hears sirens in the distance, the low rumble of multiple incoming vehicles, and footsteps approaching from behind. Cassidy appears at his side and, taking her cue from Jensen, she has her gun drawn.

“Sir”– she nods at McKellip’s gun –“you need to place your weapon on the ground.”

“Oh.” The politician’s demeanor changes immediately. “Of course! You must be Deputy Cassidy.” McKelliip pulls out the Silver Eagle and sets it down on the gravel a few feet in front of him.

She scowls as she picks up the hefty weapon. “And you are?”

“Randall McKellip, representative of the great state of Texas.”

“Texas?” Cassidy looks to Jensen and back. “What brings you all the way up here?”

McKellip’s smile is directed at Jensen. “Business.”

“Tell her what kind of business you’re here for, Rand,” Jensen taunts, unable to cover the imbalance in his voice. He regrets never having the chance to fill Cassidy in on McKellip’s involvement with Byrne.

“That’s a private matter, Ranger,” McKellip says smoothly. “I was driving through town and I saw the commotion. I support all members of the law enforcement community so I decided to follow and see if there was anything I could do to help, and it was a good thing I was here to see that man pull his weapon.”

Jensen pushes himself right into McKellip’s face. “Like you don’t know exactly _who_ you shot!”

“Jensen!” Cassidy shouts.

“What?”

He looks at Cassidy but she’s pointing to the road. Three beige sedans are rolling into the lot leading an ambulance and a dark van. It ain’t difficult to pick out the reflective silver stars painted on each of the sedans.

Jensen groans. Looks like the cavalry is ridin’ in too late.

The lead car stops a few feet away, trapping Jensen, Cassidy, and Rand in the beam of its headlights. When the passenger door opens, Jensen hears a very familiar voice.

“Texas Rangers! We can take it from here.”

JD Morgan looks the way Jensen feels. Dark circles under his eyes and wrinkled clothing, his hair and beard uncombed. But his gaze is as strong and bright as the silver badge pinned to his jacket, and he stalks up to the group with a nearly identical man who climbs out of the driver’s seat.

“Captain Morgan, it’s good to see you!”

“Representative McKellip,” JD begins gruffly, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Jensen’s never heard his captain lie before. JD must’ve put together the same pieces Jensen had and followed Rand to Colorado.

“Morgan?” The other man from the sedan steps forward. The Ranger’s star stands out on his all black ensemble, another light in the dark. His step carries a heavy swagger and he speaks with a thick accent. “You told me I’d get to shoot someone.”

JD snorts. “I think we might be a little late for that. Looks like we’ll be going back to our desks without any action.”

The other Ranger shakes his head. “I never should have taken this desk job.”

“Jensen, I don’t think you’ve ever met Sergeant Javier Bardem,” JD says. “He runs the Rangers here in Colorado.”

Jensen wants to shout over the introductions. Rand’s standing there like he belongs in their circle, no one but Jensen and JD any wiser to the situation.

“What did we miss?” Bardem asks.

McKellip starts runnin’ his mouth before anyone else can speak up.

“It looks like Ranger Ackles and the Deputy here managed to bring _another_ criminal and his gang to justice. Tell me, Ranger, were these the same men who were selling illegal drugs in this territory?”

Cassidy comes forward. “Actually, they were–”

“They appear to be related,” JD cuts her off and throws a sharp look in Jensen’s direction. “But we might never know exactly what Martin Byrne, a known felon, was doing here in Idle. Does that name sound familiar to you, Representative?”

McKellip shakes his head, lips pulled in an exaggerated pout. “I can’t say that I know the man. Was he the one I shot?”

“You son of–”

“Ackles!” JD hooks Jensen’s elbow and pulls him aside. “I’d like a word with you, please.”

Behind Sergeant Bardem’s sedan, Jensen whirls on his captain.

“What the hell, JD?”

The man sighs. “Jensen, I know. Don’t even start.” He waves at Jensen’s gun. “I think you can probably put that away.”

“What are you doing, saying that Byrne was in league with the drug dealers?” Jensen asks, obliging his captain by holstering the weapon when JD just glares at him. It doesn’t quite fit and Jensen remembers that he’s been holding Byrne’s gun since he came outta the vault. “You and I both know–”

“We both know a lot of things that aren’t gonna matter,” JD says. “From what I can see, Martin Byrne won’t be talking.”

“Because McKellip conveniently arrived in time to take him out.”

“I’m sure he did.” JD shakes his head. “That’s part of the reason I’m here. I heard he was flying up this way and I had to follow after reading what I was able to dig up on his apparent connection to Martin. But we’ve gotta have a lot more than that to take on a Texas representative and all the power behind him. Right now, Rand would make sure we lose our jobs and there goes any chance we’d have to nail him down the road.”

The last flames of Jensen’s energy are smothered.

“You’re sayin’ there’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m telling you to let him go, Jensen. For now, anyway. We’ll get another shot at him, I swear.” JD’s eyes look him up and down. “But I think you’ve had a hell of a day, am I right?”

“Shit, JD,” Jensen groans. “You have no idea.”

“Maybe not,” JD says, nodding at something over Jensen’s shoulder, “but it looks like there’s someone waiting to see you back there.”

Jensen turns and sees Jared still standing by Mac Toledo’s police car. He’s rocking on his feet, arms wrapped around his chest like he’s fightin’ off a chill. The navy blue sweatshirt’s missing, leaving him in only his t-shirt. Cursing himself, Jensen drops his shoulders. He should’ve made sure the Doc was alright before anything else.

“Captain–”

“Ranger,” JD waves off the protest. “Let me handle this. That’s an order.”

He’s left with no choice when JD stalks away, heading for Bardem and McKellip.

Walking across the lot is difficult – so much happening around him that Jensen can’t connect to. The med techs are out of the ambulance, men and women in navy jumpsuits hovering over the officers and gathered around Byrne’s corpse with Mac Toledo giving ‘em orders. One of the techs runs up to Jensen with a kit in hand but is quickly rebuffed.

Rangers in khaki pants and black jackets are spread throughout the scene, dropping yellow flags like confetti to mark shell casings and blood stains. Every few seconds, Jensen sees a flash as someone photographs a piece of evidence.

Jensen steps around the body of Martin Byrne, unable to feel a lick of emotion for the fallen man. Justice ain’t always fair, but Byrne got what was coming to him. For Bryne, even a life sentence at a Union work camp would’ve been too kind.

Davis and Cassidy are talking on the steps of the bank. Cassidy sees Jensen but she only nods, lettin’ him get to the Doc first; he imagines she’s got a few things to say.

Jared’s doing his best to smile when Jensen reaches him.

“You’re alright?” Jensen asks at the same time Jared says, “When you went into the bank–”

They both pause. Jensen can see Jared’s fingers twitching where they’re tucked around his elbows. He doesn’t think, just steps forward and wraps his arms around the Doc’s shoulders, hauling him in close.

Obviously, Jensen left his last wit in the vault, but it’s worth feeling the Doc’s limbs wake up, bare arms unfolding to clutch at Jensen’s back. Jensen closes his eyes against the red and blue flashes that strobe through the night and steals this moment for himself.

“I’m really, really glad you’re okay.” Jared’s voice is muffled in Jensen’s shirt.

Jensen’s smile is lopsided. “Me too.”

He lets the Doc pull away even though being near him causes Jensen’s adrenaline to spike again and sets his blood on fire. Jensen oughta be dog-tired, but he’s struggling to find a connection he can hold onto in all this and Jared’s more than capable of taking his weight. He wants to take their bond and bend it, exploit it, and lose himself in it until he’s positive his heart’s still beating.

From the depth of the look Jared’s giving him, Jensen ain’t the only one thinking along those lines.

Before Jensen can say _fuck it_ to crime scene procedure and whisk the Doc away from all their troubles, Cassidy pops her head into the moment. She’s as disheveled as the rest of ‘em, hair curling over her forehead where it’s escaped from her ponytail. Her shoulder holster’s empty – weapon already taken for processing, most likely – and her badge is pinned loosely to her t-shirt.

“Some night, huh?” She tries to laugh but it never reaches her blue eyes. “Jensen, about the vault–”

“Yeah,” Jensen says. “Something you forgot to tell me?”

“It was sort of your idea, you know.”

“What was?”

“Moving the cash,” she says. “Remember?”

Jensen thinks back to their stake-out conversation that morning. Feels like it happened a fuckin’ eternity ago.

“I started thinking about it,” she explains, “and when Davis showed up to relieve you, I told him about it. He thought it was a pretty good idea.”

Jared laughs suddenly. “No offense, but Davis thinks driving a tractor _naked_ is a good idea. Seriously, I’ve seen him do it.”

Jensen shakes his head. “You moved everything? Where to?”

“That’s the thing,” Cassidy says. “We hadn’t come up with the right spot yet, so Davis and I were each driving around with half of the evidence in our cars. Sort of like moving targets, I guess. As soon as we came up with a good spot, I was going to radio you.”

“How’d you know Byrne and his men had brought us here?” Jensen asks.

“I swung back by the station to see if you were still there going over reports, and I saw your gun on the table…” She takes a deep breath. “That’s when I knew something had happened. I called Davis and then I radioed Toledo. He was already on his way up here with Fuller. The bank was the first place we checked and when we saw the van…”

Jared jumps in. “The men holding me freaked when they saw the police lights and they jumped out of the van.”

“We gave them a chance to surrender,” Cassidy adds, “but they opened fire on us.”

Jensen looks over his shoulder at the bodies laid out on the gravel and the swarm of lawmen buzzing around them.

“No loose ends,” he says.

Cassidy grins. “Not this time.”

“I think you might’ve saved my skin tonight, Cass.”

“Mine, too,” Jared says, pulling Cassidy into a hug. She barely clears Jared’s shoulders, lookin’ like a kid all wrapped up against the Doc’s bulk.

“What happened in the vault?” Cassidy asks once Jared releases her.

“Byrne was so damn shocked when he saw it was empty that he dropped his gun. Gave me the opening I needed.” Jensen smiles sincerely. “It was a good move, Deputy. If Byrne had gotten his hands on the money, I don’t think the Doc and I would be standing here, talkin’ to you.”

“Don’t act so shocked,” Cassidy teases. “I’m always going to do what’s best for this town.”

“You’re gonna make a great Sheriff,” Jared says, taking two steps closer to Jensen like he’s about to grab him and make a break for it.

Jensen would follow him anywhere.

A moment later, Davis calls over and waves Cassidy toward one of the bodies leaving Jensen and Jared alone behind Toledo’s car. Jared erases the remaining space between them and presses his lips to Jensen’s ear. Jensen tries hard to keep his knees from givin’ out.

“Can we get out of here?”

“Soon,” Jensen whispers, looking around to see JD staring right at him. One tilt of his captain’s head and Jensen knows he’s being summoned for something. He squeezes Jared’s arm. “Real soon, Doc. I promise.”

  


Jensen throws his hands out in the nick of time to keep his face from slamming into the bedroom wall. Jared drapes himself over Jensen’s back, all six-foot-four of him up in Jensen’s space, hittin’ every one of his sweet spots.

“I’ve never had life-affirming sex before,” Jared pants unevenly, wet lips gnawing on Jensen’s earlobe.

“You’re missin’ out.”

One of Jared’s hands settles low on Jensen’s belly, thumb stroking, and the other wraps around the bend of his throat.

“You do this a lot?”

Jensen feels the pressure of Jared’s palm on his vocal chords when he says, “Only when I save a hot doctor from some no-good gun runners.”

Jared purrs contentedly against his ear, nipping the skin fiercely enough to leave marks.

The aches and pains Jensen had suffered during the longest single day of his career don’t register over the need he feels now. He and the Doc had stumbled into the apartment, still hours away from sunrise, taken one look at each other, and fallen together. They’d clashed, tugging at clothes and belts and boots until they were totally naked, knocking into every piece of furniture on the way to Jared’s bedroom.

As soon as the door closed behind them – no sense lettin’ Mo get underfoot – Jared had torn himself away from Jensen’s lips and spun him toward the wall.

Jared ruts against the back of Jensen’s thighs, walkin’ a desperate edge. Following the pressure Jared’s hand is putting on his throat, Jensen tips his head back to the Doc’s shoulder.

“Against the wall, Doc?” Jensen teases. “That’s pretty ambitious.”

Growling, his mouth moving to kiss and lick in long tracks down Jensen’s throat to his shoulder, Jared tempers the power of his thrusts. Up high and down low, Jared’s hands stroke and flex, drawing involuntary shivers outta Jensen.

“Maybe,” Jared says, trying to reach Jensen’s lips and ending up a breath away. “Or maybe I just wanna have you all wound up for later.”

“Think you can keep me awake that long?” Jensen bluffs. Ain’t no rest for him now – heart pounding, body thrumming – until this eager, instinctive lust plays out between them. He’s wanted Jared from the moment the scene at the bank was cleared. He could hardly wait until JD finally gave him permission to leave.

“I’m not sure,” Jared answers, dropping his hand from Jensen’s throat to his inner thigh and tugging. “What d’you think?”

He spreads Jensen’s legs, shifting their balance, and takes some of Jensen’s weight onto his own wide stance. Jared drives his dick forward into the sweaty grooves between Jensen’s thighs, his other hand pushing back on Jensen’s stomach to cant his hips further out. Jensen rolls into the motion, holding Jared’s tongue hostage between their mouths as they strain to kiss. Jared breathes hard through his nose and little puffs of air hit Jensen’s cheek each time his thighs smack forward against Jensen’s ass.

“Doc,” Jensen moans when Jared attempts to bend one of his legs up against the bedroom wall, aimin’ to stretch him obscenely. “I don’t bend that way.”

He’s grateful Jared relents; Jared apologizes to his muscles with firm, massaging strokes while he fucks a little less frantically. It’s a hell of a lot better when his legs aren’t screamin’, just basking in the smells and sensations, the heat and the way Jared’s touch turns from tender to ravaging and back. Everything’s vivid and unexpected, all of it welcome.

Whether he’s taking pity on Jensen’s over-exerted muscles or ravenous for something new, Jared pulls his thick erection from in between Jensen’s thighs, grabs his arm, and turns him around.

Crossing to the bed, Jensen seizes control of Jared’s lips – he’ll never be able to get enough of that damn mouth: the split between Jared’s lips, the fine bite of his teeth, and the supple way his tongue lures Jensen’s further in. Jared is able to frame Jensen’s entire face with his unbelievably large and capable hands, reeling Jensen in.

Jensen sits on the bed, their kiss broken as Jared steps in front of him, splays his knees wide, and sinks to kneel on the carpet. The Doc raises his hands to skim along Jensen’s inner thighs, pushing them apart but watching closely for any strain crossin’ Jensen’s face, and brings them front and center to Jensen’s dick. Jared rubs him slowly with the underside of his fingers, makin’ sure Jensen’s watching as he comes forward with open lips.

“That was gonna be my move,” Jensen says, hooked at the first touch of Jared’s mouth.

Jared’s lips pout around the head of Jensen’s dick. He looks up. “Next time?”

“Oh yeah,” Jensen moans. Too much of a good thing is exactly what he wants right now, needing Jared’s mouth on him. He wants there to be a next time, and a time after that.

“Good,” Jared purrs, “now try not to fall asleep on me.”

Anything less than rapt, nerve-shattering attention is impossible. Jared’s fingers apply pressure between his legs; the Doc’s well-educated on all the sensitive bits of Jensen’s anatomy. His thumb gropes and pushes into the flesh behind Jensen’s balls. Jensen pulls away from the shock before sinkin’ right back into it, a wave of something pretty damn good sweeping over him.

Gettin’ this kind of pleasure is rare. Jensen ain’t unwilling but he keeps things simple when he’s on the road and he’s on the road all the time. No sense makin’ things complicated or more intimate than they oughta be; Jensen gets what he needs from the men he finds appealing here ‘n there, and doesn’t let anything keep him from moving on.

Fortunately, things change ‘cause Jensen wouldn’t miss this for all the oil in Texas.

There’s a dull pink flush to the skin of Jensen’s cock as it fills with blood, harder and slicker each time Jared sinks his mouth down. There’s a little fumbling at first, like maybe the Doc hasn’t done this in a while, but after that it’s all confidence and control. Later, Jensen’ll ponder the question of what Jared’s mouth does best, but in this moment his body wants what it wants, and it wants to be wrapped up in that heat, tickled by the wet flicks of Jared’s tongue up and down his dick. Like he can’t get enough, Jared buries his face in Jensen’s lap and goes to town, forcing Jensen’s cock deep almost to the point of choking.

For his own enjoyment and partly to ensure the Doc doesn’t wear himself out before Jensen’s through with him, Jensen wraps his fingers in Jared’s hair and tugs, hopin’ Jared will ease back up the gas a little bit. Jared pulls off and Jensen bends down to meet his mouth.

“No good?”

“Too good,” Jensen says, tangling the tips of his fingers through the damp hair at the back of Jared’s neck. The man sweats like crazy, like his entire person overheats when he comes skin-to-skin with Jensen.

As amazing as Jared’s blowjob skills are, Jensen doesn’t need to get off this way and he makes sure Jared knows that. Jensen remembers his promise from last time and he intends to follow through tonight. He keeps a loose hold on Jared, letting his cock slip outta that mouth every minute or so and bringing the Doc into a kiss. While they make out, Jared’s hands compensate for the lack of sweet, hot suction by jerking Jensen off slowly and surely, as if he knows Jensen’s body better than Jensen does.

Hell, it might be true.

Hands, mouths, and cocks are dripping and there are wet, garbled sounds comin’ outta Jared’s throat. Jensen falls back and the mattress is soft underneath his body, feather-top shaping to fit the curve of his spine and the breadth of his shoulders. His back muscles tingle as he finally lets go of the reins, body throwing caution to the wind and lettin’ it ride.

Leaning up on his left elbow, Jensen touches himself with his right hand – Jared watching outta the corner of his eye – nails scratching lightly over the thin, pale skin of his inner thighs. His blunt nails dig harder as he gets close: the dull edge of pain keeps him from flying apart too soon.

But the tease can’t go on forever and Jensen’s primed to get the show goin’. Jared pushes himself to his feet and crawls on the bed, nudging Jensen along with him until they’re lying side by side with their legs slotted together.

They kiss through the eye of the storm, ridin’ the waves that rock their bodies together. Jensen doesn’t even flinch when Jared growls and rolls them, pining Jensen to the sheets, keeping his discomfort to the back of his mind while they continue to slip their tongues back and forth between their lips.

Jared slides his forearms behind Jensen’s neck and crosses them, raising Jensen’s mouth so it’s his for the taking. Jensen finds himself gulping down air when he can just to keep his head from going all fuzzy, wedging one of his thighs up between Jared’s legs for a little payback. Soon enough, the Doc’s ripping away from the kiss – his hair’s a wild mess and he’s panting, mouth gaping as he looks down at Jensen.

“What d’you want?”

There’s just a hint of a cleft in the Doc’s chin and Jensen fits his lips around it, sucking on the sweaty skin and bumps of bone. He loses Jared’s question in a moment of distraction, too busy navigating every dip and dimple between Jared’s nose and his chin.

“Jensen,” Jared gasps, tilting his head up and away. “What do you want?”

“Ladies’ choice.” Jensen grins, tempting Jared’s lips closer. He’s rarely felt so loose and unburdened in bed with someone else, used to gettin’ off quick and efficient, and trying to forget the details before the sun comes up.

“Son of a bitch,” Jared whispers, showin’ off that smile. “I should leave you with nothing.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jensen says, making sure Jared can feel the full length of their cocks sliding together. “You want me to say it?”

A darker passion clouds Jared’s eyes. “Yeah.”

“You wanna fuck me, don’t you?” Jensen throws his voice as low as it’ll go and feels Jared’s arms shaking on either side of him.

“Jensen… Jen–”

The rest of Jensen’s name’s obliterated as Jared’s lips slam down on his. They drive right back into the storm and whip through the prep, too geared up to go slowly. Propped up on his elbows, Jensen’s mouth is watering as he watches Jared stretch a thin rubber over his cock and slick it up with a drizzle of lube. The sight’s intimidating but Jensen wants it, turning over onto his hands and knees, practically purring when Jared lines up behind him.

Neither of them have the patience to tease – Jared fucks his wet cock between Jensen’s thighs once before pressing in, slippery fingers working against Jensen’s ass.

They both gasp as Jared finishes his long, slow entry into Jensen’s body. The pressure nearly splits Jensen apart from the inside out, but he keeps breathing, focuses on the way Jared’s hands are holding his hips, trying to soothe.

As soon as the excruciating burn fades, Jensen pushes back.

“Oh…” Jared moans, letting out a long exhale. He takes the roll of Jensen’s hips as permission to thrust; his hands don’t stay in one place, constantly moving across Jensen’s lower back or around his thighs, stroking Jensen’s dick back to hardness.

It ain’t been so long that Jensen’s forgotten what it’s liked to be fucked, but Jared throws himself into the act with a single-mindedness that’s thrilling and consuming. Jensen takes every thrust – long, deep pushes that make his muscles tingle and sharper jabs that force a hiss out of his throat. He wants the pain because the pleasure that comes afterward is like a balm, warm and comfortable; every feeling reminds him that he’s made it through to fight another day and to enjoy the man he's with.

Jared slides out of Jensen’s body with no warning, settling his hand in the curve of Jensen’s lower back to keep him from turning around.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jared pants. “I just want to try something.”

He drops to the bed and pulls Jensen into his arms, back-to-chest, slotting a thigh between Jensen’s legs and helping him raise one knee.

“This okay?”

“Yeah…just keep going,” Jensen says, throwing his head back against Jared’s shoulder as he’s stretched all over again.

Jensen’s toes curl involuntarily when he’s completely spread open around Jared’s cock, muscles locked and blood pumping hard through his veins. He gropes between his legs and twists his fingers around his dick, bucking into the slight pressure of Jared’s teeth skimming along his throat.

Jared uses his body ruthlessly, intending to ride him hard and put him away soaked to the bone and exhausted. He draws all Jensen’s got and scours for more, hands coaxing Jensen’s muscles to hold on for another minute – cling to the edge before letting go.

But tonight, Jensen’s body can only be pushed so far. He fights for enough coordination to strip his cock using the same fast ‘n shallow rhythm Jared’s fuckin’ him with, stomach seizing up as he comes hard. Jensen’s got nothin’ left after that, every reserve shaken right outta him along with his orgasm. Jared’s hips slam against his ass, chasing the same high, but Jensen can’t keep his leg raised anymore, his muscles dropping like lead weights. Jared grunts when Jensen lets his leg fall, his breathing labored.

Past the ache of coming so hard he thought he was gonna die, body slack and open, Jensen appreciates the thickness inside him, the mouth-watering way Jared fills his body and torments himself with tiny, impatient rolls of his hips. Jensen does ‘em both a favor and rolls forward, cool sheets like a balm on his sweaty chest, and feels Jared moving up and over him. Sprawling boneless against the bed, Jensen soaks up all the last-minute, frantic touches Jared gives him – a hand on the curve of his spine that slides quickly up to his shoulder, fingers curving around Jensen’s outer thigh.

He can’t angle his neck right to see Jared when he comes, but he’s able to feel that massive release of pressure, Jared straining forward for one last thrust before he’s toppling onto Jensen’s back and trembling through the kick of his orgasm. Jared’s mouth is by Jensen’s ear – he hears nothing like words coming out, just a bunch of nonsense – but Jensen goes warm at the touch of lips behind his earlobe.

Neither one of ‘em is inclined to move for a while after that.

  


The last stars fade into the dawn and Jared’s bedroom begins to lighten. They oughta be asleep but they’re not, and despite how tired Jensen is, part of him is glad to be awake enjoying the quiet.

Jared’s eyes are closed but his breathing’s too shallow for sleep. He’s lying on his side facing Jensen, and there’s a fine sheen of sweat lingering where his neck muscles join in a ‘v’ below his throat. Jensen shifts closer, feet searching out cooler patches underneath the sheets, and watches Jared open his eyes.

Everything they haven’t said hangs between them. If he could, Jensen would make it all up and disappear, ‘cause in the end, he’s got everything he needs and no amount of talkin’ can change that.

Jared’s first to give into the pressure.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I mean, for telling them where the money was and–”

“I don’t care.” If Jensen says it harshly, it’s only to impress on the Doc how much he means it.

“But I should’ve–”

Jensen’s not gonna let the Doc finish a single thought at this rate. “No, you did what you needed to – what I should’ve done from the beginning. I’ll say thank you if it gets you to shut up about it,” he adds with a lighter tone, bringing his hand up to curve over Jared’s shoulder.

The Doc nods, grinning, but continues. “When that man told me what he was going to do, I just couldn’t keep quiet. This is my home and I wanted to do _something_ to protect it, you know?”

Jensen squeezes the hard muscle under his fingers. “I was wrong when I called you an outsider.”

The Doc sighs, eyes dropping to the sheets. Jensen might fall asleep like this, one hand touching Jared and the wheels in his head finally slowin’ down. His eyelids are sagging when Jared speaks up again.

“Did I ever tell you why I came out here?”

“Don’t need to,” Jensen says, exaggerating a yawn thinkin’ it might clue the Doc in.

No such luck.

“California sucks,” Jared says, hiding behind his eyelids. “Maybe you knew that already, but I hated it. My parents were disappointed when I told them I was going to medical school. It was the best one in California, but they wanted me to become a computer engineer, work with semi-conductors like my dad did, and invent the next big thing. Having a doctor in the family was embarrassing.”

Jensen doesn’t mean to snort, but it sounds absurd. Any Union family would be proud to raise a man with Jared’s skills.

“You know how it is in California, right?” Jared opens his eyes and scoffs. “Why become something _archaic_ like a doctor when you could be building and programming new machines to take the place of doctors and nurses? Still, when I graduated, I took a job at one of the best hospitals. My parents got fed up after that, like they finally realized I wasn’t gonna go back and change careers at that point. I guess that’s when things started falling apart around me. I had the job I wanted, but my mom ended up leaving my dad and moving to Seattle. My dad got remarried to this young engineer from his company and she had a baby not too long after. Figured he wanted a second chance to correct all the mistakes he made with me.”

“Doc–” Jensen tries to cut in. He hadn’t realized the pain that’d come with hearing Jared’s memories – he should’ve known better considering his own history.

“Hang on,” Jared says, forcing a smile onto his face. “So, that’s when I decided to leave. Nothing good was happening for me and I decided to move to a place where I might mean something. I didn’t care about standing out; I just wanted decent people to know my name. I guess I was looking for peace, which sounds so lame. I drove across the mountains and stopped in a few towns ‘til I came here and met Bill Conners, and you know the rest.”

“Guess I ruined that.”

Jared’s grin returns. “I can live with it. There’s more than one kind of peace.” He turns his head enough to pass his lips over Jensen’s fingers before falling back onto his pillow. “We should probably try and sleep, huh?”

“I knew you were a smart guy, Doc.”

Jared’s out first, rolling onto his back and hooking one foot around Jensen’s ankle. The wheels are turnin’ again in Jensen’s mind and he stares at the ceiling for a while.

Starting at daylight, Jensen’s got a lot to make up for. His badge is tarnished – the Rangers were powerless to put away the most dangerous kind of criminal: the one with the means to fund his aspirations – and there are more than a few things in Idle that need fixing, least of all the sheriff’s station. Not to mention, there’s a Californian doctor who came here lookin’ for a quiet life and found Jensen instead. Jensen owes the Doc some serious down-time.

He’s got his work cut out but he rolls onto his side with a smile on his face and slows the tempo of his breathing until it matches Jared’s.

  


Mo bounds across the parking lot to the man standing alongside the Sabre. JD Morgan leans down and gives the pup a good scratch behind the ears, smiling as Jensen walks to meet him. He’s wearing the same clothes he showed up in last night, face a little drawn but his eyes are bright and focused.

“This must be Mo,” JD says. “He’s a handsome fella.”

Jensen’s captain had radioed while he and Jared were eating breakfast and drinking the strongest coffee Jared’s machine was capable of brewing. JD had been waiting down in Jared’s parking lot, asking to see Jensen before he drove back to Denver with Sergeant Bardem and all of the evidence from Jensen’s case.

Jensen’s glad to see it go.

Clouds drift across the sky like white flakes in a sea of blue. Jensen had walked outside without a jacket, sleeves of his button-down rolled up to his elbow. He feels looser than he has in weeks, facing his captain with a clear path set in his mind.

“Is McKellip gone?” Jensen asks when Morgan straightens up.

JD nods. “Rand took off last night just as soon as Bardem was through getting his statement. He said he was in a hurry to get back to Texas.”

“Figures,” Jensen mutters. He hasn’t had enough coffee to mount another righteous fight over the politician.

“What about you?” Morgan asks. “When can I expect you back in Dallas?”

“Actually, I thought I might stay around here for a while,” Jensen says, taking a deep breath. “Rand and Martin could have accomplices we don’t know about, or Rand might send someone to clean up the rest of the mess.”

“And you don’t want to leave Sheriff Cassidy on her own yet, just in case something happens. Am I right?”

 _Sheriff Cassidy_. Has a good ring to it, Jensen thinks.

Jensen shrugs and says, “Sure.” He already knows JD Morgan can see through his bullshit at fifty paces.

JD pretends to think hard on it. “I can add a few more paid weeks to the Idle job – due diligence and all that – to make sure Byrne’s scheme is all wrapped up.”

“Sounds good.”

The captain grins. “I’ll send you the paperwork then. Should I have it delivered to your room at the motel, or…”

“Might as well send here to the clinic,” Jensen finishes for him.

“Of course.” JD’s smiling so hard, his cheeks have gotta hurt. Jensen wants to scowl but he can’t. “Well, I guess I should head out. Can’t leave Bardem with the evidence too long or else his name will be the only one on the case! Man’s a hog for credit.”

He reaches down to pet Mo one last time. “I’ll call you in a few days, let you know how the case works out.”

Jensen steps forward. “Captain, did I ever tell you–”

“Good _bye_ , Jensen.” JD turns toward his car to hide his smile.

“Thank you,” Jensen says, knowing his captain won’t hear it.

He watches Morgan get in the car and stands in the lot until the beige sedan pulls away. At his heels, Mo woofs.

“You alright with sticking around here for a while, mutt?” Jensen asks. Mo woofs again and circles Jensen’s ankles, wagging his tail. “I bet you are – the Doc’s got your number down, you spoiled pup.”

Jensen looks up at the apartment window. Jared’s up there, probably brewing more coffee, sitting at the table and reading over all the appointments he’s had to cancel recently. But the Doc’s not working today; Jensen’s already made sure of that.

Mo barks, sharper this time, already halfway back to Jared’s door.

Jensen grins. “Yeah, Mo. Me too.”

 

FIN.

 

  



End file.
